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DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 

VOL. I. 



DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 



BY 



WrLLIAI^I EDWAED HAKTPOLE LECKY 



VOLUME I. 




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NEW YOKE 
LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO 

LONDON AND BOMBAY 

1896 



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COPrRIGHT, 1896 
By LONGMANS, GEEEN, AND CO. 



All rigUts reserved 



PKEFACE 



Mai^y years ago, when I was deeply immersed in the 
History of England in the Eighteenth Century, I re- 
member being struck by a saying of my old and illus- 
trious friend, Mr. W. E. Greg, that he could not 
understand the state of mind of a man who, when so 
m^any questions of burning and absorbing interest were 
rising around him, could devote the best years of his 
life to the study of a vanished past. I do not think 
the course I was then taking is incapable of defence. 
The history of the past is not without its uses in 
elucidating the politics of the present ; and in an age 
and country in which politicians and reformers are 
abundantly numerous, it is not undesirable that a few 
men should persistently remain outside the arena. 
But the study of a period of history as recent as that 
with which I was occupied certainly does not tend to 
diminish political interests, and a writer may be par- 
doned if he believes that it brings with it kinds of 
know^ledge and methods of reasoning that may be of 
some use in the discussion of contemporary questions. 

The present work deals with a large number of these 
questions, some of them lying in the very centre of 
party controversies. I had intended to introduce it 
with a few remarks on the advantage of such topics 
being occasionally discussed by Avriters who are wholly 
unconnected with practical politics, and who might 
therefore bring to them a more indejiendent judgment 



VI PREFACE 

and a more judicial temperament than could be easily 
found in active politicians. This preface I cannot now 
write. At a time when the greater portion of my 
book was already in the printers' hands an unexpected 
request, which I could not gratefully or graciously 
refuse, brought me into the circle of parliamentary 
life. But although my own position has been altered, 
I have not allowed this fact to alter the character of 
my book. While expressing strong opinions on many 
much-contested party questions, I have endeavoured 
to treat them with that perfect independence of judg- 
ment, without which a Avork of this kind can have no 
permanent value. Nor have I thought it necessary to 
cancel a passage in defence of university representation 
in general, and of the representation of Dublin Uni- 
versity in particular, which was written when I had no 
idea that it could possibly be regarded as a defence of 
my own position. 

One of the principal diliiculties of a book dealing 
with the present aspects and tendencies of the political 
world in many different countries lies in the constant 
changes in the subjects that it treats. The task of the 
writer is often like that of a painter who is painting 
the ever-shifting scenery of the clouds. The great 
tendencies of the world alter slowly, but the balance 
of power in parliaments and constitutions is continu- 
ally modified, and, under the incessant activity of 
modern legislation, large groups of subjects are con- 
stantly assuming new forms. I have endeavoured to 
follow these changes up to a very recent period ; but in 
dealing with foreign countries this is sometimes a mat- 
ter of no small difficulty, and I trust the reader will 
excuse me if I have not always altogether succeeded. 

London : February^ 1890. 



CONTENTS 

OF 

THE FIRST VOLUME 



CHAPTER I 



English Representative Government in the Eighteenth Century 

Objects to be attained 2 

Taxation and representation 2 

Power of landed property .... o. 3 

And of the commercial classes . . , . . 3 

Aristocratic influence . 3 

Diversities in the size of constituencies and qualification 

of electors ........ 5 

The small boroughs .5 

Dislike to organic change 7 

Merits of English government . . . . . 8 
The founders of the American Republic aimed at the 

same ends 9 

Judge Story on the suffrage 10 

Rousseau's conception of government essentially dif- 
ferent 12 

Review of the French constitutions, 1789-1830 ■ . 12 

Ascendency of the middle class in France, 1830-1848 15 

English Reform Bill of 1832— Its causes ... 15 

Fears it excited not justified by the event ... 20 

Place of the middle class in English government . 21 

The period from 1832 to 1867 21 

Votes not always a true test of opinion • . . 21 

_ Motives that govern the more ignorant voters . . 23 

- Dangers of too great degradation of the suffrage . 25 



vm 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 



Growth of Rousseau's doctrine in England — The Irish 
representation ....... 

University representation . . . 

The new form of sycophancy 

Attacks on plural voting ...... 

Equal electoral districts 

Taxation passing wholly under the control of numbers 
Successful parliaments mainly elected on a high suffrage 

Instability of democracies 

When they are least dangerous 

French Democracy 

Favourable circumstances under which it has been tried 

Manhood suffrage in 18-i8 

Eestricted in 1850 



Coup 



d'Etat 



Re-established by Louis Napoleon— The 

and the plebiscite 

Universal suffrage under the Second Empire 
Last days of the Empire .... 
Democracy and the Franco-German War 

The Tliird Republic 

Weakness of the President 

Decline of political ideals . 

Ministerial instability 

The permanent service 

The Republic and liberty 

French Finance, 18U-1870 

French Finance during the Republic 

Forms of corruption and extravagance 

Good credit of France . 

Financial dangers . . . . 

Scherer on French political life 

Lowered political tone .... 

American Democracy 

Characteristics of the American Constitution 

Its framers dreaded democracy . 

Advantageous circumstances of America 

Growth of democratic influence in the Presidential eleC' 

tions 

Elections for tlie Senate — Cliaracteristics of that body . 
The lowering of tlie suffrage ..... 



27 
28 
30 
30 
31 
32 
33 
34 
35 

35 
36 
37 

37 
38 
39 
40 
42 
42 
43 
45 
45 
47 
49 
54 
56 
58 
59 
60 
62 

63 

67 

68 
69 
70 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME IX 



Elected judges ...... 

The ' Molly Maguires ' 

Corruption of the judicature 

Growth of the spoils system . . . . 

Political assessments on office-holders . 

Connection of the spoils system with democracy 

American party warfare .... 

Attempts to restrict the spoils system 

The ballot in America ..... 

Lax naturalisation 

The Know-Nothing party .... 
The Irish rote . . , . 
Enfranchisement of negroes ..... 

Corruption in New York 

Municipal corruption general in the great cities 



PAGE 

73 
74 

74 

78 
81 
83 
85 
86 
89 
90 
91 
92 
93 
95 
97 



3Ieasures of Reform 

Judges made more independent . . . . . 101 

Power of local legislatures limited . . . . 102 

Increased authority of the mayors . . , . 105 

Mr. Bryce on American corruption ... 107 

American acquiescence in corruption . . 113 

The best life apart from politics • . . . .114 

Summary by Mr. Bryce 115 

Protective strength of the Constitution . . . .116 

American optimism ....... 118 

Influence of the separation of Church and State on po- 
litical morals . . . . . . . .118 

Public spirit during the War of Secession . . 119 

And after its conclusion ...... 120 

Excellence of general legislation in the United States 121 

Tocqueville's judgments — Changes since he wrote . .122 
Corruption in railroad management . . . 125 

Abolition of slavery — Its influence on foreign policy . 126 
Intellectual side of American civilisation . . . 127 

Democracy not favourable to tlie higlier intellectual life 131 

The prospects of the Republic 132 

Protection 133 

The Pension List 134 

Lessons to be drawn from American experience . . 136 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 



CHAPTER II 

PAGE 

Majorities required in different nations for constitutional 

changes 137 

Attempt to introduce the two-thirds majority system in 

New South Wales . 138 

Small stress placed in England on legislative machinery 138 

The English belief in government by gentlemen . . 140 
Declining efficiency of parliamentary government 

throughout Europe 142 

England has not escaped the evil .... 144 
Increasing power and pretensions of the House of Com- 
mons . 145 

The Parish Councils Bill of 1894 .... 146 

Excess of parliamentary speaking -Its causes . . 146 

Its effects on public business ..... 149 

Growth of the caucus fatal to the independence of the 

House of Commons ... .... 149 

The relation of the House to Government — Disintegra- 
tion of parties ...... . , 150 

Results of the group system ..... 151 

Increase of log-rolling 153 

And of the appetite for organic change . . . 153 

Both parties have contributed to this .... 154 

Conservatism in English Radicalism .... 155 

Growth of class bribery ...... 155 

Rendered easy by our system of taxation . . . 156 
Sir Cornewall Lewis on the best taxation — Indirect 

taxation 157 

Remissions of direct taxation sometimes the most bene- 
ficial 158 

Exaggeration of Free Trade — The corn registration duty 

— The London coal dues ...... 159 

The abolition of the income tax made an election cry in 

1874 -History of this election 160 

Appeals to class cupidity by the Irish Land League . 167 

Its success has strengthened the tendency to class bribery 167 

Irish Land Question 

Peculiar difficulties to be dealt with in Trohmd . . 167 

Tenants' improvements 168 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME XI 

PAGE 

Sharman Crawford's proposals 169 

The Devon Commission 169 

Abortive attempts to protect improvements . . .171 

Land Act of 1860 171 

And of 1870 — Its merits and demerits . . . .172 

Paucity of leases and tenants' improvements— How 
viewed in Ireland . . . . . . .177 

Rents in Ireland before 1870 not generally extortionate 178 
But such rents did exist, and most tenancies Avere preca- 
rious .......... 180 

The Act of 1881 182 

Absolute ownership of land under the Incumbered Es- 
tates Act 182 

Circumstances under which this Act had been carried^ 

Its nature 182 

It guaranteed complete ownership under a parliamentary 

title 184 

Confiscation of Landlord Rights hy the Act of 1881. The 

purchased improvements ...... 185 

Fixity of tenure given to the present tenant . . 185 
Which could not honestly be done Avithout compensating 

the owner ......... 186 

Inseparable rights of OAvnership destroyed . . 187 

The NeAv Land Court and its proceedings . . . 188 

' Judicial decisions ' 190 

Rights of the Legislature over landed property —Mill . 191 

Dishonest character of Irish land legislation . . 192 

The defence of the Act of 1881 193 

Misconception of its effects 19-4 

The language of Mr. Gladstone ..... 195 
The Act failed to pacify Ireland —Effects of the Home 
Rule agitation . . . . . . .197 

Tlie Land Act of 1887 198 

Tendency of subversive principles in legislation to groAv 200 
Landlord claim for compensation ..... 201 
Effects of the land legislation on Irish capital and con- 
tracts 202 

On the ultimate position of tenants .... 203 

Moral effects of this legislation ..... 204 

The Evicted Tenants Bill ...... 206 



XU CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 

PAGE 

The worst form of robbery, legal robbery . . . 209 

Dangers of the Irish precedent 210 

Mr. George's comparison of Irish and American land- 
lordism ... 210 

Where should State intervention stop ? . . , 212 

Other Attacks on ProiyeHy 

Theories of Mr. George ...... 212 

Mill's doctrine of the ' unearned increment ' . 213 

English land no longer the source of English food . 216 

Attacks on national debts 216 

On mining royalties ....... 218 

On literary property 218 

Nationalisation of railroads, &c. . . . . = 220 
Cautions in dealing with such questions— Is dem.ocracy 

suited to the task? 222 

The worship of majorities . . . . . . 223 

Old and New Jesuitism ...... 224 

Influence of philosophical speculation on politics . . 225 
Character in pul)lic life — How far democratic election 

secures it ....... 226 

The Home Rule alliance — Compared with the coalition 

of Nortli and Fox 228 

Effects of the lowering of the suffrage on political mo- 
rality ......... 229 

And of the increased hurry of modern life . . . 230 

Personal and class interests in politics . . . 230 

Inadequate sense of the criminality of political misdeeds 231 

The etliics of party 233 

Nonconformist ministers and Mr. Parnell . . . 236 
Relative importance of private and public morals in 

politics 237 

Growth of the professional politician .... 238 

Democratic local government — Its good and evil . . 238 

Place of wealth in modern politics .... 240 

Measures that must strengthen the professional politician 241 

High standard of political integrity in Great Britain . 242 

Probity of the permanent service .... 243 

Better side of the House of Commons .... 243 

Competitive examinations — Tlieir drawl)acks . . 243 

Their great use in restraining corru})tion . . . 246 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME Xlll 

PAGE 

The character of a nation not always shown by its public 

life . 246 

Evidence that English character has not declined— Its 

moral and philanthropic side . . . . . 2-i7 

Its robuster qualities ....... 2i^Q 

The governing capacity — Egypt and India . . . 24:9 

Dangers to India in democratic government . . 250 

High character of English municipal government . , 252 

Political influence of the provincial towns . . 252 

Influence of the telegraph on politics — Provincial press . 253 

Modern England not barren in great men , . . 254 



CHAPTER III 

Democracy an inevitable fact ..... 256 

Is not uniformly favourable to liberty . . . 256 

Illustrations from Roman and French history , . 256 

Equality naturally hostile to liberty .... 256 

Love of democracy for authoritative regulation . . 257 
Effects of the increase of State power — Taxation and 

liberty 258 

Other dangers to liberty ...... 259 

Party system hastened the transformation . . . 260 

Some Suggested Remedies 

Change in the Irish representation 261 

Class representation — Its history and decline . . 264 

Representation of minorities ...... 266 

^ An educational franchise ...... 272 

Mill's suggestions for mitigating dangers of universal suf- 
frage .......... 273 

Repudiated by modern Radicalism— The ' fancy ' fran- 
chises 276 

The Swiss Referendum — Its history and influence . . 277 

Its recent adoption in the United States . . . 280 

Attempt to introduce it into Belgium .... 285 

Arguments for and against it 286 

Belief that a low suffrage is naturally conservative . 293 

Extension of the power of committees . . . 294 

The American committee system ..... 295 



XIV CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 

PAGE 

The French system 297 

English parliamentary committees — Devolution . .297 
Proposal that Governments should only resign on a vote 

of want of confidence ...... 299 

Arguments against it 299 

Probability that democratic Parliaments will sink in 

power 300 

Democratic local government — Success of English local 

government 301 

Largely due to property qualifications . . . 302 
Almost all of them now abolished — Act of 1894 . . 303 
This is the more serious on account of the great in- 
crease in taxation 303 

The local debt 304 

Increase of State Taxation in Europe— Its Causes 

Military expenditure — Standing armies . . . 305 
Buckle's prediction of the decline of wars . . . 307 
The commercial spirit now favours territorial aggran- 
disement 308 

Growing popularity of universal military service . . 309 

Arguments in its defence ...... 309 

Importance of the question to the English race . = 312 

Arguments against it . . . . . ■ • 312 

Conscription and universal suffrage connected . .315 
But the military system may come into collision with the 

parliamentary system 316 

National education — Its social and political effects . 317 
Primary education assuming the character of secondary 

education ........ 322 

Sanitary reform 323 

Reformatories and prison reform .... 327 
Increased taxation due to increased State regulation — 

Herbert Spencer's views 328 

Necessity for some extension of State control . . 329 

Advantages of State action in some fields . . . 330 
Government credit — Enterprises remunerative to the 

State 331 

Unremuuerative forms of literature and art . . . 332 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME XV 

PAGE 

Subsidies to the theatre ...... 333 

Dangers of State regulation and subsidies . . . 333 
Change in the character of democracy since Joseph 

Hume 335 

Motives that have led to State aggrandisement . . 335 

Mr. Goschen on its extent 335 

Attempts to push it still further — The Manchester school 

repudiated 337 

Tendency to throw all taxation on one class . . 337 
Tocqueville and Young on English taxes in the eigh- 
teenth century 337 

Progressive taxes of Pitt 338 

Abolition of taxes on the necessaries of life . . . 339 

Bentham, Mill, and Montesquieu on exempted incomes 339 

Lord Derby's description of English taxation . . 340 
Taxation mainly on the rich and chiefly for the benefit 

of the poor 340 

Adam Smith on the rules for taxation . . . 341 

Thiers on the same subject ...... 341 

Advantages of taxation of luxuries .... 343 

Growing popularity of graduated taxation — Its early 

history 343 

Taxation in Switzerland ...... 344 

In the Netherlands, New Zealand, France, and the United 

States 345 

Arguments against graduated taxation . . . 346 

Probability that it will increase ..... 349 

Its effect on the disposition of landed property . . 349 

On the position and habits of the upper classes . . 350 

On personal property 354 

Wealth dissociated from duties . . . . . 355 

Democracy not indifferent to wealth .... 359 



CHAPTER IV 

ARISTOCRACIES AND UPPER CHAMBERS 

Dangers of government by a single Chamber . . 361 

Countries where it exists 363 

Lessons derived from the Commonwealth . . . 364 



XVI CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 

PAGE 

From the United States ...... 364 

From France ..... o = . . 364 

Early History of the House of Lords 

Effects of the Reformation and the Rebellion . . 365 

Of the Revolution of 1688 ...... 365 

Importance of the small boroughs in sustaining its in- 
fluence . ........ 366 

The Peerage Bill of Stanhope ..... 366 

The Scotch Union ....... 367 

The Resolution of 1711 . 367 

Creations of George III. — The Irish Union . . 368 

Position of the spiritual peers ..... 369 

The House of Lords under George III. not unpopular 370 

Power of personal interest on its members before 1832 . 371 

Their influence in the House of Commons . . 373 

Attitude of the peers towards the Reform Bill of 1832 . 373 

Change in their position effected by the Bill . . 374 
Importance of the House of Lords in making legislation 

harmonise with the popular will 374 

In diminishing the too great influence of party in legis- 
lation ......... 375 

In protecting minorities 376 

Its ecclesiastical policy 376 

Its general moderation 378 

Attacks on the Lords after the Reform Bill of 1832 . 378 

The Hereditary Element 

Advantages of special education for politics . . . 379 
Influences that maintain the character of the British 

aristocracy ... ..... 380 

Their energy and power of adaptation .... 386 

Large amount of ability among them . . . 386 

Advantages the nation derives from an aristocracy . 387 

Representative character of the House of Lords . 389 
Popularity of the aristocracy in England , . .391 

Its good and evil sides ...... 392 

Aristocracy and plutocracy ...... 392 

Debility and apathy of the House of Lords . . 398 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME XVII 



Causes of its Debility 

The small quorum— Proxies 399 

- Discouraging influences in the House . . . 400 
Jealousy of the House of Commons of Bills originating 

in the Lords 402 

Financial impotence of the Lords .... 402 

Sole right of the Commons to originate Money Bills . 403 
The Lords deprived of their old right of amending 

them 403 

Difficulty of maintaining this rule — Its relaxation . 404 

The right of rejecting Money Bills .... 406 

Repeal of the paper duties in 1860 . . . . 407 
The different provisions of the Budget combined in one 

Bill 413 

Connection of taxation and representation . . 414 

PoAvers of foreign Senates over finance .... 415 
Dangers of the concentration of all financial power in 

one House — Its mitigations in England . . . 415 

The House of Lords cannot overthrow Ministers . . 416 



Its Judicial Functions 

Its origin and abuses .... 
Attempts to make lawyers life peers 
The peerage of Lord Wensleydale (1856) 
Later attempts to create life peers . 
Lord Selborne's Court of Appeal (1873) 
Lord Cairns's new Appellate Court in 

Lords 

Success of this measure .... 
Its modification in 1887 



the House of 



417 
419 
419 
422 
423 

423 
424 
424 



Excessive and increasing number of new peerages . 425 

Elements from which they are drawn . . . 426 

Imperfect recognition of non-political eminence . . 428 

One-sided political influence in the House of Lords . 430 

This fact a recent one — Its causes 432 

Parliamentary history, 1892-1895 . . , , 432 

The crusade against the Lords 433 

The election of 1895, and its lessons .... 436 



XVlll 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 



The importance of a reform of the House of Lords not 
diminished ....... 



Foreign Upper Houses 

The Eoman Senate . . . . 
The Senate of the United States . 
The French Senate . . . . 
The German Bundesrath 
Upper Houses in Prussia and Austria 

In Italy 

In Spain and Switzerland . 

In the Netherlands 

In Belgium 



Colonial Constitutions 

Their general character 

The Canadian Senate 

The Newfoundland Constitution 

African colonial Governments — The island colonies 

Upper Chambers in Australia and New Zealand 

Proposals for reforming the House of Lords 

Advantages of retaining a limited hereditary element . 

Life peers 

Proposals for a larger introduction of the representative 

principle 

The limitation of the veto 

Right of ministers to sit in both Houses 

Advantages and disadvantages of carrying unfinished 

legislation into a second session 

This should at least be done in the case of amendments 

in the Lords 



438 



439 
440 
448 
449 
451 
452 
452 
454 
454 



456 
456 
457 
457 

458 



459 
462 

462 
464 
466 

468 



470 



CHAPTER V 



NATIONALITIES 



Changes in the basis of international politics , . . 471 
The rights of nationalities in the French Revolution , 472 

Completely ignored after the fall of Napoleon , . 472 



COj^TENTS of the first volume XIX 

PAGE 

Signs of revival before 1830 — French Revolution of that 

year 473 

And of 1848 473 

Italian writers on nationality 474 

Nationality not necessarily a democratic idea . . 476 

Ambiguities about the elements that constitute it . 476 

Plebiscites ......... 478 

Good and evil sides of the doctrine of nationalities . 479 

Not applicable to uncivilized nations .... 480 

Plebiscites frequently deceptive .... 480 

Dangers of pushing the nationality doctrine to its full 
consequences . . . . . . . .481 

America a Test Case 

Its annexations ........ 483 

The secession of the South ...... 484 

Analysis of English opinion on the War of Secession . 485 

The Northern case for repressing the revolt . . . 489 
Nearly all European predictions about the war proved 

false . 490 

The Italian Question 

Impulse it gave to the doctrine of nationalities . . 490 

Invasions of Naples and Rome 491 

The Peace of Villafranca and the Roman question . 492 

The Italian policy of England 493 

Lord J. Russell's estimate of the plebiscites . . . 494 

Success of the English policy 495 

Policy of Napoleon III. 496 

And of England 497 

The unity of Italy dearly purchased . . . .498 

The unity of Germany — The agglomeration of race ele- 
ments .500 

Conflicting tendencies towards agglomeration and to- 
wards local unities 501 

Increased value attached to national languages . .501 

The military system accentuates national differences . 502 
Difficulties of reconciling local aspirations with imperial 

interests 502 

Influences that are weakening the nationalist spirit . 504 



XX CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME 

PAGB 

CHAPTER VI 

DEMOCRACY A>T) RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

Nations differ in their conceptions of liberty and in the 

kinds of liberty they value 505 

Importance of taking stock of our conceptions of liberty 509 



Religious Fi 

Its growth in English law 509 

And in public opinion — Causes of increased tolerance . 510 
Contrast between Catholic opinion in England and that 

in Rome and Canada 511 

Abolition of religious disqualifications in the United 

States .513 

In France 513 

In Belgium, and Prussia ...... 514 

Slow progress of the movement in England — The Catho- 
lic question ........ 514 

Disqualifications of Nonconformists, Jews, Atheists, &c., 

gradually abolished . . . . . . 514 

Higher education thrown open to Dissenters — Its effects 515 
The Established Church — Arguments for and against it 

changed 519 

The modern case for an establishment . . . 520 

Strengthened by abolition of disqualifications . . 522 
Enlargement of the limits of the Church — Relation of 

Nonconformists to it 522 

Subscription to Articles — Indelibility of orders — De- 
cision? of Privy Council ...... 524 

Decline of intolerance in Continental legislations . 525 

Sweden and Austria ....... 526 

Spain and Portugal 527 

Limitation or modification of religious liberty . . 529 



IndAa 



Early religious policy of the East India Company . 530 

Admission of missionaries in 1813 ..... 531 

Prohibition of infanticide and human sacrifices . 532 

Abolition of tlie suttee 532 



CONTENTS OF THE FIRST VOLUME XXI 

PAGE 

Attitude of Government towards caste and idolatrous 

worship 535 

Measures of 1888 and 1888 ...... 535 

Changes in the laws of inheritance and marriage . 586 

Memorandum of Colonel Herbert Edwardes . . . 587 

Queen's Proclamation in 1858 537 

Philanthropic tendencies hostile to the old beliefs . . 538 

Indian education and its effects 539 

Mormonism 

Polygamy not its original doctrine 540 

Early history of Mormonism 5-40 

Murder of Joseph Smith . . . . . . 542 

Emigration to the Salt Lake ..... 542 

Utah becomes an American Territory — Its early history 543 

Should polygamy be tolerated? 545 

Congress undertakes to stamp it out . . . . 547 

The Edmunds law . 548 

Other measures against polygamy .... 550 

Conflicting opinions about their success .... 552 

Influences within Mormonism hostile to polygamy . 553 

Polygamy abandoned by the Mormons .... 554 

Utah made a State 556 

Anglo-Saxon democracy favourable to religious liberty . 557 

The sentiment of nationality sometimes hostile to it . 557 

The Anti-Semite movement 558 

The Russian persecution 559 



DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 



CHAPTER I 

The most remarkable political cliaracteristic of the lat- 
ter part of the nineteenth century has unquestionably 
been the complete displacement of the centre of power 
in free governments, and the accompanying changes in 
the prevailing theories about the principles on which 
representative government should be based. It has 
extended over a great part of the civilised world, and, 
although it has had all the effects of a profound and 
far-reaching revolution, it has, in some of the most 
conspicuous instances, been effected without any act of 
violence or any change in the external framework of 
government. I have attempted in another work to de- 
scribe at length the guiding principles on which the 
English parliamentary government of the eighteenth 
century was mainly based, and which found their best 
expression and defence in the Avritings of Burke. It 
was then almost universally held that the right of 
voting was not a natural right, but a right conferred 
by legislation on grounds of expediency, or, in other 
w^ords, for the benefit of the State. As the House of 
Commons had been, since the Ee volution of 1688, the 
most powerful element of the Constitution, nothing in 
the Constitution was deemed more important than the 
efficiency of the machine, and measures of parliament- 



2 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ary reform were considered good or bad exactly in pro- 
portion as they conduced to this end. The objects to 
be attained were very various, and they were best at- 
tained by a great variety and diversity of representa- 
tion. It was necessary to bring together a body of 
men of sufficient intelligence and knowledge to exercise 
wisely their great power in the State. It was necessary 
to represent, and to represent in their due proportions, 
the various forms and tendencies of political opinion 
existing in the nation. It was necessary to represent 
with the same completeness and proportion the various 
and often conflicting class interests, so that the wants 
of each class might be attended to and the grievances 
of each class might be heard and redressed. It was also 
in the highest degree necessary that the property of 
the country should be specially and strongly repre- 
sented. Parliament was essentially a machine for tax- 
ing, and it was therefore right that those who paid 
taxes should have a decisive voice, and that those who 
chiefly paid should chiefly control. The indissoluble 
connection between taxation and representation was 
the very mainspring of English conceptions of freedom. 
That no man should be taxed except by his own con- 
sent was the principle which was at the root of the 
American Revolution. It was the chief source of all 
extensions of representative government, and it was 
also the true defence of the property qualifications and 
voting privileges which concentrated the chief power 
in the hands of the classes who were the largest tax- 
payers. No danger in representative government was 
deemed greater than that it should degenerate into a 
system of veiled confiscation — one class voting the 
taxes which another class was compelled to pay. 

It was also a fundamental principle of the old system 
of representation that the chief political power should 



CH. I. ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE 3 

be with the owners of land. The doctrine that the 
men to whom the land belonged were the men who 
ought to govern it was held, not only by a great body 
of English Tories, but also by Benjamin Franklin and 
by a large section of the American colonists. It was 
urged that the freeholders had a fixed, permanent, in- 
alienable interest in the country, widely different from 
the migratory and often transient interests of trade 
and commerce ; that their fortunes were much more 
indissolubly blended with the fortunes of the State ; 
that they represented in the highest degree that healthy 
continuity of habit and policy which is most essential 
to the well-being of nations. As Burke, however, ob- 
served, the introduction of the borough representation 
showed that the English Legislature was not intended 
to be solely a legislature of freeholders. The commer- 
cial and trading interests had also their place in it, and 
after the Revolution that place became exceedingly 
great. It was strengthened by the small and venal 
boroughs, which were largely in the hands of men who 
had acquired great fortunes in commerce or trade. 
The policy of the Revolution Government was, on the 
whole, more decidedly directed by commercial views 
than by any others, and it was undoubtedly the small 
boroughs which, during the first half of the eighteenth 
century, mainly kept the Hanoverian family on the 
throne. 

Aristocratic influence in the Constitution was always 
very great, though it was never absolute. The House 
of Commons after the Revolution was a stronger body 
than the House of Lords. The most powerful minis- 
ters of the eighteenth century were commoners. Great 
popular movements in the country never failed to in- 
fluence the Legislature, though they acted less promptly 
and less decisively than in later periods. On the other 



4 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

hand, a considerable proportion of the members of the 
House of Commons were returned by members of the 
House of Lords, and nearly every great family had at 
least one representative in the Commons. The aris- 
tocracy formed a connecting link between the smaller 
country gentry and the trading and industrial inter- 
ests. Like the latter, but unlike the former, they 
were usually supporters of the system of government 
established by the Eevolution, of the Whig interest, 
and of the Hanoverian dynast}'. They possessed in 
many cases great fortunes in money ; they had wider 
interests and more cosmopolitan tastes than the ordi- 
nary country gentlemen ; and they shared with the 
commercial classes the ascendency in the boroughs. A 
few of them had risen from those classes, or were con- 
nected with them by marriage ; while, on the other 
hand, they were the chief landowners, the natural 
leaders of the landowning classes. 

It was contended that this system secured the har- 
mony between the two branches of the Legislature, and 
that aristocratic ascendency brought with it many 
other advantages. The possession of land, more than 
any other form of property, is connected with the per- 
formance of public duties, and the great landowner 
was constantly exercising in his own district governing 
and administrative functions that were peculiarly fitted 
to give him the kind of knowledge and capacity that is 
most needed for a legislator. Men of this class may 
have many faults, but they are at least not likely in 
tlie management of public affairs to prove either reck- 
less and irresponsible adventurers or dishonest trustees. 
To say this may not appear to be saying very much ; 
but a country which has succeeded in having its public 
affairs habitually managed with integrity, and with a 
due sense of responsibility, will have escaped evils that 



CH. i. ARISTOCRATIC INFLUENCE O 

have wrecked the prosperity of many nations. It was 
urged, above all, that the place Avhich the aristocracy 
exercised in the Legislature had at least the advantage 
of reflecting the true facts and conditions of English 
life. In each county a great resident noble is com- 
monly the most important man. He influences most 
largely the lives and happiness of the inhabitants, 
takes the leading part in local movements, exercises by 
general consent a kind of superintendence and pre- 
cedence among his neighbours. It was therefore per- 
fectly in accordance with the principles of representa- 
tive government that his class should exercise a 
somewhat corresponding influence in the Legislature. 

In order to attain these various ends the House of 
Commons was elected in a manner which showed the 
most complete absence of uniformity and symmetry. 
There w^ere great differences both in the size of the 
constituencies and in the nature of the qualifications. 
In many places members were returned by a single man 
or by a small group of often venal freemen. In other 
constituencies there was a strong popular element, and 
in some places the scot-and-lot franchise approached 
nearly to universal suffrage. The difference of the 
political power vested in an individual voter in differ- 
ent parts of the country was enormously great, and 
even the House of Commons was only very partially a 
representative body. ' About one half of the House of 
Commons," wrote Paley, ^obtain their seats in that As- 
sembly by the election of the people ; the other half, 
by purchase or by nomination of single proprietors of 
great estates."' 

The large share in the representative body which was 
granted to the two latter classes of members was de- 



Moral Philosophy^ ii. 218. 



6 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

fended by many arguments. It was said, with truth, 
that the small boroughs had introduced, and usually at 
an early age, into Parliament by far the greater num- 
ber of the men of extraordinary ability who have 
adorned it, and also many useful and experienced men, 
not quite in the first rank, who from narrow circum- 
stances, or from the turn of their own characters, or 
from some unpopular religious belief, or from the fact 
that they had spent much of their lives in obscure or 
remote fields of public duty, would never have been 
acceptable candidates in a popular constituency. To 
ministries they were of the utmost value. They gave 
a busy minister a secure and independent seat free 
from all local demands and complications, enabled him 
to devote his undivided energies to the administration 
of the country, and made it easy for him to bring into 
Parliament any colleague or valuable supporter who 
had failed at an election, and was perhaps under a 
cloud of transient unpopularity. In the eyes, too, of 
the best thinkers of the eighteenth century it was of 
the utmost importance that members of Parliament 
should not sink into simple delegates. On the broad 
lines and principles of their policy it was understood 
that they should reflect the sentiments of their con- 
stituents ; but the whole system of parliamentary gov- 
ernment, in the opinion of Burke and most other 
eighteenth - century statesmen, would degenerate if 
members were expected to abdicate their independent 
judgments, to submit to external dictation about the 
details of measures, to accept the position of mere pup- 
pets pulled by demagogues or associations outside the 
House. Tlie presence in Parliament of a large body of 
men who did not owe their position to popular favour 
secured an independent element in the House of Com- 
mons, and affected the tone of the whole assembly. 



CH. I. THE ENGLISH CONSTITUTION 7 

The borough system, also, concentrating power in a 
few hands, greatly strengthened ministries. It gave 
them a steady, calculable force, which in many circum- 
stances, but especially in their foreign policy, was often 
of inestimable value. Fluctuations of power were less 
frequent, less violent, less capricious than they after- 
wards became. Ministers could count more confidently 
on persistent parliamentary support in lines of policy 
of which the rewards were only to be looked for in a 
distant future ; amid the chequered fortunes and the 
ever-changing aspects of a great struggle. 

This system of representation was supported and 
consolidated by a tone of political feeling which has so 
completely passed away that it is somewhat difficult to 
realise the power which it once possessed — I mean that 
strong indisposition to organic change, as distinguished 
from administrative reform, which the best statesmen 
of all parties continually inculcated. They were usually 
ready to meet practical evils as they arose, but they 
continually deprecated any attempt to tamper with the 
legislative machine itself, except under the most im- 
perious necessity. They believed that the system of 
the Constitution had grown up insensibly in accord- 
ance with the wants of the nation ; that it was a highly 
complex and delicate machine, fulfilling many differ- 
ent purposes and acting in many obscure and far- 
reaching ways, and that a disposition to pull it to 
pieces in the interests of some theory or speculation 
would inevitably lead to the destruction of parliamen- 
tary government. A great part of its virtue lay in the 
traditionary reverence that surrounded it, in the un- 
written rules and restrictions that regulated its action. 
There was no definite written constitution that could 
be appealed to, but in no other form of government 
did tacit understandings, traditional observances, il- 



8 DE.MOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

logical but serviceable compromises^ bear so great a 
part. 

It was claimed for this form of government that, 
with all its defects and anomalies, it had unquestion- 
ably worked well. I may again quote the words of 
Paley. ' Before we seek to obtain anything more/ he 
writes, '^ consider duly what we already have. We 
have a House of Commons composed of 548 mem- 
bers, in which number are found the most consider- 
able landholders and merchants of the Kingdom ; the 
heads of the army, the navy, and the law ; the occu- 
piers of great offices in the State ; together with many 
private individuals eminent by their knowledge, elo- 
quence, and activity. If the Country be not safe in 
such hands, in whom may it confide its interests ? If 
such a number of such men be liable to the influence 
of corrupt motives, what assembly of men will be se- 
cure from the same danger ? Does any new scheme of 
representation promise to collect together more wis- 
dom or to produce firmer integrity ?'^ 

The English Constitution of the eighteenth century 
might also be tested in other ways. It is incontestable 
that under it England had enjoyed for a long space of 
time much prosperity, a far larger measure of steady 
freedom, and a far more equitable system of taxation 
than any of the great States of the Continent. Under 
this form of government she passed successfully through 
the dangerous internal crisis of a long-disputed suc- 
cession ; she encountered successfully foreign dangers 
of the first magnitude, from the time of Louis XIV. 
to the time of Napoleon ; and although her history 
was by no means unchequered by faults and disasters, 
it was under this system of government that she built 



Mo7'al Philosophy^ ii. 220, 221. 



CH. I. THE AMERICAN CONSTITUTION 9 

up lier vast Indian Empire and largely extended and 
organised her colonial dominions. 

The other great type of free government existing in 
the world was the American Eepublic, and it is curious 
to observe how closely the aims and standards of the 
men who framed the memorable Constitution of 1787 
and 1788 corresponded with those of the English 
statesmen of the eighteenth century. It is true that 
the framework adopted was very different. In the 
true spirit of Burke, the American statesmen clearly 
saw how useless it would be to reproduce all English 
institutions in a country where they had no historical 
or traditional basis. The United States did not con- 
tain the materials for founding a constitutional mon- 
archy or a powerful aristocracy, and a great part of 
the traditional habits and observances that restrained 
and regulated English parliamentary government could 
not possibly operate in a new country with the same 
force. It was necessary to adopt other means, but the 
ends that were aimed at were much the same. To di- 
vide and restrict power ; to secure property ; to check 
the appetite for organic change ; to guard individual 
liberty against the tyranny of the multitude, as well as 
against the tyranny of an individual or a class ; to in- 
fuse into American political life a spirit of continuity 
and of sober and moderate freedom, were the ends 
which the great American statesmen set before them, 
and which they in a large measure attained. They 
gave an elected president during his short period of 
office an amount of power which was, on the whole, 
not less than that of George III. They invested their 
Senate with powers considerably beyond those of the 
House of Lords. They restricted by a clearly defined 
and written Constitution the powers of the representa- 
tive body, placing, among other things, the security of 



10 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

property^ the sanctity of contract, and the chief forms 
of personal and religious liberty beyond the powers of 
a mere parliamentary majority to infringe. They es- 
tablished a Supreme Court with the right of inter- 
preting authoritatively the Constitution and declaring 
Acts of Congress which exceeded their powers to be 
null and void ; they checked, or endeavoured to check, 
the violent oscillations of popular suffrage by intro- 
ducing largely into the Constitution the principle of 
double election ; and they made such large majorities 
necessary for the enactment of any organic change 
that these changes became impossible, except where 
there was an overwhelming consensus of public opin- 
ion in their favour. 

In dealing with the suffrage they acted in the same 
spirit. 'Chief Justice Story has treated this subject in 
a book which is, in my opinion, one of the most valu- 
able ever written on the science of politics. He argues 
that ^ the right of voting, like many other rights, is 
one which, whether it has a fixed foundation in nat- 
ural law or not, has always been treated in the practice 
of nations as a strictly civil right, derived from and 
regulated by each society according to its own circum- 
stances and interests/ On the ground of natural right 
it would be impossible to exclude females from voting, 
or to justify the arbitrary and varying enactments by 
which different countries have defined the age at which 
males attain their majorities. ' If any society is entrusted 
with authority to settle the matter of the age or sex of 
voters, according to its own vicAvs of its policy, or con- 
venience, or justice, who shall say that it has not equals 
authority, for like reasons, to settle any other matters 
regarding' the rights, qualifications, and duties of 
voters ? ' The truth is that ' there can be no certain 
rule ' on these subjects ' for all ages and for all na- 



CH. I. THE AMERICAN SUFFRAGE 11 

tions/ The right of suffrage will vary almost infinite- 
ly, according to the special circumstances and charac- 
teristics of a nation.^ 

The American Legislature acted on this principle. 
In the colonial period ' no uniform rules in regard to 
the right of suffrage existed. In some of the Colonies 
. . . freeholders alone were voters ; in others, a very 
near approach was made to universal suffrage among 
the males of competent age ; and in others, again, a 
middle principle was adopted, which made taxation 
and voting dependent upon each other, or annexed to 
it the qualification of holding some personal estate, or 
the privilege of being a freeman or the eldest son of a 
freeholder of the town or corporation.^ When the 
Revolution separated the Colonies from the mother 
country the same diversity was suffered to continue. 
* In some of the States the right of suffrage depends 
upon a certain length of residence and payment of 
taxes ; in others, upon mere citizenship and residence ; 
in others, upon the possession of a freehold or some 
estate of a particular value, or upon the payment of 
taxes, or performance of some public duty, such as 
service in the militia or on the highways. In no two 
of these State constitutions will it be found that the 
qualifications of the voters are settled upon the same 
uniform basis.' A proposal to establish a uniform 
system of voting on a common principle was brought 
before the Convention which framed the Constitution 
of 1787-88, but after full discussion it was resolved to 
leave the existing diversities untouched, and to con- 
fide to each State the power of regulating as it pleased 
the system of suffrage. All that the Convention 



' Story, Commentaries on the Constitution of the United States^ 
ii. 55-58. 



12 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

established was, that the electors for the House of 
Representatives should, in each State, have the qualifi- 
cations requisite for the electors of the most numer- 
ous branch of the State Legislature. As a matter of 
fact, for many years property qualifications were re- 
quired in most States for electors, and a diversity in 
the system of election prevailed which was little, if at 
all, less than in England. In several of the State leg- 
islatures, though not in the Federal Legislature, a 
property qualification was required in representatives 
and in the Federal Legislature representatives, and 
direct taxes were apportioned by the same ratio. ^ 

If we now pass from the two great English-speaking 
communities to France, we find ourselves in a different 
region of thought, over which Rousseau exercised the 
strongest influence. It is not necessary for me here to 
enter into a general examination of the political theo- 
ries of Rousseau, or of the many inconsistencies they 
present. The part of his teaching which had most in- 
fluence, and with w^hich we are now specially concerned, 
is that relating to the suffrage. He held that absolute 
political equality was the essential condition of political 
freedom, and that no diversities of power, or represen- 
tations of classes or interests should be suffered to ex- 
ist in the Constitution. Every man should have a vote, 
and a vote of the same value ; a representative should 
be nothing more than a delegate under the absolute 
control of the constituency ; and no law can have any 
binding force which has not been directly sanctioned 
by the whole community. His whole system rested on 
the idea of natural and inalienable rights. 

These views did not at once pass into Frencli legis- 
lation. The States-General which met in 1789 had 



1 Story, ii. 59-00, 95, 90, 100. 



CH. I. FRENCH CONSTITUTIONS 13 

been elected by orders, the nobles and the ecclesiastics 
voting separately and directly for their own represent- 
atives. For the third estate the system of double elec- 
tion was adopted, the electors being themselves elected 
by a very wide constituency,, consisting of men of 
twenty-five who had a settled abode and who paid di- 
rect taxes. In the Constitution of 1791 the system of 
double election was maintained ; the right of voting 
for the primary assemblies was restricted to ' active 
citizens^ who^ among other things, paid direct contri- 
butions to at least the value of three days^ labour ; 
while the men Avhom they elected, and who in their 
turn elected the representatives, were required to 
possess a considerable property qualification. It varied, 
according to the size of the constituencies and the 
nature of the property, from a revenue of the value of 
500 days' to a revenue of the value of 100 days' labour. 
J In 1792, however, the Legislative Assembly very nearly 
established manhood suffrage, though it was qualified 
by the system of double election. The connection of 
voting with property and taxation was abolished. All 
Frenchmen of twenty-one who had resided for a year 
in the department, and who were not in domestic ser- 
vice, might vote in the primary assemblies, and no 
other qualification was required, either for the elected 
electors or for the deputies, except that they should 
have attained the age of twenty-five. It was under 
this system that the Convention — the most bloody and 
tyrannical assembly of which history has any record — 
was elected. The Constitution of June 1793 com- 
pleted the work of democratic equality. The Con- 
vention decreed that ' all Citizens have an equal right to 
concur in the enactment of the law and in the nomina- 
tions of their delegates or agents ' ; that ^ the Sover- 
eign people is the universality of French citizens/ and 



14 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

that ^tliey should nominate directly their deputies. •' 
Po^Dulation was made the sole basis of national repre- 
sentation. All citizens of twenty-one years who had 
resided for six months in the electoral district were 
made voters^ and every -40,000 voters were entitled to 
return one member. This Constitution itself was sub- 
mitted to and ratified by direct universal suffrage. 

The year when this Constitution was enacted was 
one of the most tragical in French history. It was the 
year when the ancient monarchy was overthrown , 
when the King and Queen were brought to the scaffold ; 
when the flower of the French nation were mown 
down by the guillotine or scattered as ruined exiles 
over Europe ; when the war with England began which 
raged, with one short intermission, for more than 
twenty years. 

The Constitution of 1793 never came into force. It 
was adjourned till after the war, and long before the 
war had terminated France had passed into wholly dif- 
ferent conditions. The downfall of the Jacobins in 
1794 soon led to a restriction of the suffrage and a re- 
vival of the old system of double election, and in the 
strong reaction against the horrors of the Revolution 
France moved on by steady stages to the absolute des- 
potism of Xapoleon. The system of direct election of 
members of Parliament was not established in France 
till 181 T, and universal suffrage, as it had been desig- 
nated by the Convention in 1T93, did not revive until 
1848. But the theory that each change in the Con- 
stitution siiould be ratified by a direct popular vote 
showed more vitality, and successive Governments soon 
learned how easily a plebiscite vote could be secured 
and directed by a strong executive, and how useful it 
might become to screen or to justify usurpation. The 
Constitution of 1795, which founded the power of the 



CH. I. THE REFORM BILL OF 1832 15 

Directors ; the Constitution of 1799, which placed the 
executive power in the hands of three Consuls elected 
for ten years ; the Constitution of 1802, which made 
Buonaparte Consul for life, and again remodelled the 
electoral system ; the Empire, which was established 
in 1804, and the additional Act of the Constitution 
promulgated by Napoleon in 1815, were all submitted 
to a direct popular vote.^ 

A great displacement of political power was effected 
by the French Kevolution of 1830 and by the English 
Keform Bill of 1832. Tocqueville, in a recently pub- 
lished book, has shown very clearly how the true sig- 
nificance of the French Kevolution of 1830 was the 
complete ascendency of the middle, or, as the French 
say, bourgeois class. In that class all political powers, 
franchises, and prerogatives for the next eighteen years 
were concentrated ; their good and evil qualities per- 
vaded and governed the whole field of French politics ; 
and, by a happy coincidence, the King in mind and 
character was in perfect harmony with the representa- 
tives of the people.^ Constitutional government was 
carried out during these years faithfully, and in some 
respects even brilliantly, but it was tainted by much 
corruption, and it rested on an electorate of much less 
than a quarter of a million. 

In England, a similar though not quite so decisive 
influence was established by the Keform Bill of 1832. 
Many causes contributed to this measure, but two pre- 
dominated over all others, one of them being industrial 
and geographical, and the other political. The great 
manufacturing inventions of the eighteenth century 



^ See Jules Clere, Histoire de la France depuis 1789. 
du Suffrage Universel^ 12-30, '^ Souvenirs de Tocqueville^ 

33 ; Laferriere, Constitutions pp. 5-7. 



16 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

had called into being vast masses of unrepresented 
opinion in tlie i^rovincial towns, transferred the weight 
of population froHi the southern to the northern half 
of the island, and, partly by dejDleting old centres of 
power, and partly by creating new ones, added enor- 
mously to the inequalities and anomalies of English 
representation. On the other hand, the great wave of 
Toryism that overspread England after the French 
Revolution produced a greatly increased disinclination 
among the governing classes to all change, and espec- 
ially to all measures of parliamentary reform. The 
Royal prerogative of summoning new centres of popula- 
tion to send members to AVestminster had long since 
become wholly obsolete. Pitt, with much prescience, 
had attempted in 1783 and 1785 to meet the growing 
inequalities of representation and provide for a grad- 
ual diminution of the nomination boroughs ; but his 
scheme was defeated, and he himself abandoned the 
policy of reform. 

There can be little doubt that for many years after 
the liorrors of tiie French Revolution the anti-reform 
party represented Avith perfect fidelity the true senti- 
ments of the English people, and no kind of blame 
should be attached to the ministers who resisted par- 
liamentary reform during the continuance of the war. 
After that period, however, home politics were for 
some years unskilfully conducted, and tlie reform 
party grew steadily in strength. The reaction which 
the French Reign of Terror had produced had spent its 
force. The many forms of misery and discontent pro- 
duced by the sudden fall of prices, by the enormous 
weight of the war taxation, by the growth of the fac- 
tory system, and by the vast and painful transforma- 
tion of industry it involved, had all their influence on 
political oi)ini()n. Lord John Russell, dissociating 



CH. T. THE REFORM BILL OF 1832 17 

parliamentary reform from radical schemes of universal 
suffrage, electoral districts, and vote by ballot,, repeat- 
edly brought forward the wise policy of disfranchising 
small boroughs which were found guilty of gross cor- 
ruption, and transferring their seats to the great unrep- 
resented towns, beginning with Leeds, Birmingham, 
and Manchester. Such a policy, if it had been adopted 
in time, and steadily pursued, might have long averted 
a great and comprehensive change ; but it was obsti- 
nately resisted. Many mistakes, and perhaps still more 
the establishment of peace, had dimmed the reputation 
which the Tory party had justly gained by their con- 
duct of the war. On the other hand, the no less just 
discredit which had fallen upon the Whig party on 
account of the profoundly unpatriotic conduct of a 
large section of its members in the early years of the 
war had passed away. Most of its new leaders were 
men who had no part in these errors, who were un- 
tainted by French sympathies and revolutionary doc- 
trines, who reflected the national feelings quite as truly 
as their opponents. 

The triumph of Catholic Emancipation greatly ac- 
celerated the change. The Catholic question had been 
for many years that on which pul3lic opinion Avas 
mainly concentrated ; and experience shows that the 
strength of public opinion which is needed to carry 
a great organic change in England can never be si- 
multaneously evoked on two totally different questions. 
Some very acute judges, indeed, who cared nothing for 
Catholic Emancipation in itself, steadily resisted it be- 
cause they saw that, once it was carried, the undivided 
enthusiasm of the country would flow into the channel 
of reform. 1 

' Lord Russell used to relate Lord Lonsdale in private always 
that this Avas the reason which gave for his opposition to Catho- 

YOL. I, 2 



18 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

After the settlement of the Catholic question the 
Whig party^ having no longer the anti-Po]3ery preju- 
dice to contend with, acquired all the popularity its 
democratic tendencies would naturally give it, and ob- 
tained the undivided support of the Protestant Dis- 
senters. A great Whig cause had triumphed, and it 
had triumphed by the Act of a Tory ministry. The 
struggle had demonstrated clearly the coercive power 
which might be exercised over Parliament by organ- 
ised popular agitation. The Tory party was defeated, 
divided, discredited, and discouraged, and a new class 
of Irish reformers were introduced into Parliament. 
The cry for reform grew louder and louder, and the 
triumph of the cause in France greatly assisted it. 

Under all these influences a movement of public 
opinion in favour of parliamentary reform was created 
which had probably never been equalled in England 
for its spontaneity and force. The country seemed for 
a time on the verge of revolution ; but the measure 
was at last carried. To many contemporaries the de- 
struction of the nomination boroughs and of the con- 
trolling power of the aristocracy over the House of 
Commons seemed destined to ruin the parliamentary 
system of England. Bat the men who chiefly presided 
over this great change were genuine patriots, pro- 
foundly imbued with the best political philosophy of 
the English school, and as far as possible from sympa- 
thy with the French apostles of liberty. It is curious 
to notice how deeply rooted the English sentiment of 
the necessity to Avell-ordered and enduring freedom of 
disparities of political power has been, even at the 



lie Emancipation. He said that carried, it Avould l)e impossible 
he did not care about tliis meas- to resist the cry for reform, 
ure, but he knew tliat, if it were 



CH. I. THE REFORM BILL OF 1S32 19 

time when parliamentary government was in its in- 
fancy. Xo one expressed this feeling better than 
Shakespeare^ in the noble words which he places in 
the month of Ulysses : 

Degree being vizarded, 

Th' unwortliiest shows as fairly in the mask. 

The heavens themselves, the planets, and this centre. 

Observe degree, priority, and place. 

1 when degree is shak'd, 
Which is the ladder to all high designs, 
The enterprise is sick. How could communities, 
Degrees in schools, and brotherhoods in cities. 
Peaceful commerce from dividable shores, 
The primogenitive and due of birth. 
Prerogative of age, crowns, sceptres, laurels. 
But by degree, stand in authentic place :' 
Take but degree away, untune that string, 
And, hark, what discord follows I each thing meets 
In mere oppugnancy : the bounded waters 
Should lift their bosoms higher than the shores, 
And make a sop of all this solid globe : 
Strength should be lord of imbecility, 
And the rude son should strike his father dead : 
Force should be right; or rather, right and wrong 
(Between whose endless Jar justice resides) 
Should lose their names, and so should justice too. 
Then everything includes itself in power, 
Power into will, will into appetite ; 
And appetite, a universal wolf, 
So doubly seconded with will and power, 
Must make perforce a universal prey, 
And last eat up liimself . ^ 



^ Troilus and Cressida, act i. Jar not with liberty, but well 
scene 3. So Milton — consist.' 



Paradise Lost, Book V. 1. 791. 

;Milton puts these lines in the 
degrees mouth of Satan, but in his trea- 



' If not equal all, yet free 
Equally free ; for orders and ^Milton puts these lines in the 



20 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

Though the Reform Bill undoubtedly changed the 
centre of political power in England^ it left the lead- 
ing characteristics of the old system uu destroyed. The 
constituencies were still very different in size and popu- 
lation. The suffrage in different parts of the kingdom 
was very variously arranged. All the old powers and 
influences were retained, though their proportionate 
weight was changed. The House of Lords still re- 
mained an important element in the Constitution. 
The landed interest was still powerful in the county 
constituencies. Property was specially and strongly 
represented, and the Reform Bill brought great masses 
of hitherto unrej^resented property, as well as great 
centres of population, into the circle of the Constitu- 
tion. The middle class, which now became the most 
powerful in the political system, was one which could 
be excellently trusted with a controlling power. Aris- 
totle long since observed, that it is to this section of 
the community that the chief power in government 
may be most wisely and most profitably given. It is not 
the class most susceptible to new ideas or most prone 
to great enterprises, but it is distinguished beyond all 
others for its political independence, its caution, its 
solid practical intelligence, its steady industry, its high 
moral average. It also, perhaps, feels more promptly 



tise on Reformation in England untutored monarch, the noblest, 

he expresses very simihir sen- worthiest, and most prudent 

timents in his own person, men, with full approbation and 

' There is no civil government suffrage of the people, have in 

that hath been known — no, not tlieir power the supreme and 

the Spartan nor the Roman final determination of highest 

. . . more divinely and bar- affairs' (Book II.). On the 

moniously tuned, more equally political oi)inions of English 

balanced as it were by the poets, see the interesting pref- 

hand and scale of Justice, than ace to Sir Henry Taylor's 

is the Commonwealth of Eng- ' Critical Essays ' ( Works^ v. 

land, when, under a firm and xi.-xix.). 



CH. I. MIDDLE-CLASS GOVERNMENT 21 

and more acutely than any other class the effects of 
misgovernment, whether that misgovern men t takes the 
form of reckless adventure and extravagant expendi- 
ture, or whether, in the not less dangerous form of rev- 
olutionary legislation, it disturbs settled industries, 
drives capital to other lands, and impairs the national 
credit, on which the whole commercial system must 
ultimately rest. 

In England, however, this middle class, though it 
became after 1832 the most powerful, had not the same 
absolute empire as in France. The active administra- 
tion of affairs was chiefly in the hands of the upper 
and most cultivated class. The chief controlling power 
lay with the great middle classes, and followed mainly 
the bent of their wishes and tendencies. At the same 
time, the suffrage was so arranged that it was, in some 
degree at least, witliin the reach of the skilled artisans 
— a great and intelligent class, who should have a dis- 
tinct place and interest in every well-ordered govern- 
ment. 

It does not appear to me that the world has ever seen 
a better Constitution than England enjoyed between 
the Reform Bill of 1832 and the Reform Bill of 1867. 
Very few parliamentary governments have included 
more talent, or represented more faithfully the various 
interests and opinions of a great nation, or maintained 
under many trying circumstances a higher level of 
political purity and patriotism. Tlie constituencies at 
this time coincided very substantially with the area of 
public opinion. Every one who will look facts hon- 
estly in the face can convince himself that the public 
opinion of a nation is something quite different from 
the votes that can be extracted from all the individuals 
who compose it. There are multitudes in every na- 
tion who contribute nothing to its public opinion ; who 



22 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

never give a serious tliouglit to public affairs, who have 
no spontaneous wish to take any part in them ; who, 
if they are induced to do so, will act under the com- 
plete direction of individuals or organisations of an- 
other class. The landlord, the clergyman or Dissent- 
ing minister or priest, the local agitator, or the 
public-house keeper, will direct their votes, and in a 
pure democracy the art of winning and accumulating 
these votes will become one of the chief parts of prac- 
tical politics. 

Different motives will be employed to attain it. 
Sometimes the voter will be directly bribed or directly 
intimidated. He will vote for money or for drink, or 
in order to win the favour or avert the displeasure of 
some one who is more powerful than himself. The 
tenant Avill think of his landlord, the debtor of his 
creditor, the shopkeeper of his customer. A poor, 
struggling man called on to vote upon a question about 
which he cares nothing, and knows nothing, is surely 
not to be greatly blamed if he is governed by such con- 
siderations. A still larger number of votes will be 
won by persistent appeals to class cupidities. The 
demagogue will try to persuade the voter that by fol- 
lowing a certain line of policy every member of his 
class will obtain some advantage. He will encourage 
all his Utopias. He will hold out hopes that by break- 
ing contracts, or shifting taxation and the power of 
taxing, or enlarging the paternal functions of govern- 
ment, something of the property of one class may be 
transferred to another. He will also appeal persist- 
ently, and often successfully, to class jealousies and 
antipathies. All the divisions which naturally grow 
out of class lines and the relations between employer 
and employed will be studiously inflamed. Envy, 
covetousness, prejudice, will become great forces in 



CH. I. THE UNINSTRUCTED VOTERS 23 

political propagandism. Every real grievance will be 
aggravated. Every redressed grievance will be revived ; 
every imaginary grievance will be encouraged. If the 
poorest^ most numerous, and most ignorant class can 
be persuaded to hate the smaller class, and to vote 
solely for the purpose of injuring them, the party man- 
ager will have achieved his end. To set the many 
against the few becomes the chief object of the elec- 
tioneering agent. As education advances newspapers 
arise which are intended solely for this purpose, and 
they are often almost the only reading of great num- 
bers of voters. 

As far as the most ignorant class have opinions of 
their own, they will be of the vaguest and most child- 
like nature. When personal ascendencies are broken 
down, party colours will often survive, and they form 
one of the few elements of real stability. A man will 
vote blue or vote yellow as his father did before him, 
without much considering what principles may be con-- 
nected with these colours. A few strong biases of 
class or creed will often display a great vitality. Large 
numbers, also, will naturally vote on what is called 
''the turn-about system." These people, they will say, 
have had their turn ; it is now the turn of the others. 
This ebb and flow, which is distinct from all vicissi- 
tudes of opinion, and entirely irrespective of the good 
or bad policy of the Government, has become of late 
years a conspicuous and important element in most 
constituencies, and contributes powerfully to the de- 
cision of elections. In times of distress the flux or 
reflux of the tide is greatly strengthened. A bad har- 
vest, or some other disaster over which the Government 
can have no more influence than over the march of the 
planets, will produce a discontent that will often gov- 
ern dubious votes, and may perhaps turn the scale in a 



24 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

nearly balanced election. In all general elections a 
large number of seats are lost and won by very small 
majorities, and influences such as I have described may 
decide the issue. 

The men who vote through such motives are often 
most useful members of the community. They are 
sober, honest, industrious labourers ; excellent fathers 
and husbands ; capable of becoming, if need be, admir- 
able soldiers. They are also often men who, within 
the narrow circle of their own ideas, surroundings, and 
immediate interests, exhibit no small shrewdness of 
judgment ; but they are as ignorant as children of the 
great questions of foreign, or Indian, or Irish, or co- 
lonial policy, of the complicated and far-reaching con- 
sequences of the constitutional clianges, or the great 
questions relating to commercial or financial policy, on 
which a general election frequently turns. If they are 
asked to vote on these issues, all that can be safely pre- 
dicted is that their decision will not represent either 
settled conviction or real knowledge. 

There is another and very different class, who are 
chiefly found in the towns. They are the kind of men 
who may be seen loitering listlessly around the doors of 
every gin-shop — men who, through drunkenness, or 
idleness, or dislionesty, have failed in the race of life ; 
who either never possessed or have wholly lost the 
taste for honest continuous work ; Avho hang loosely 
on the verge of the criminal classes, and from whom 
the criminal classes are chiefly recruited. These men 
are not real labourers, but their presence constitutes 
one of the chief difficulties and dangers of all labour 
questions, and in every period of revolution and an- 
archy they are galvanised into a sudden activity. With 
a very low suffrage they become an important element 
in many constituencies. Without knowledge and 



CH. I. THE DEMOCRATIC THEORY 25 

without character, their instinct will be to use the 
power which is given them for predatory and anarchic 
purposes. To break up society, to obtain a new deal 
in the goods of life, will naturally be their object. 

Men of these two classes no doubt formed parts of 
the old constituencies, but they formed so small a part 
that they did not seriously derange the constitutional 
machine or influence the methods of candidates. When 
they are very numerous they will naturally alter the 
whole action of politicians, and they may seriously im- 
pair the representative character of Parliament, by sub- 
merging or swamping the varieties of genuine opinion 
by great uniform masses of ignorant and influenced 
voters. That symptoms of this kind have appeared 
and increased in English politics since the Reform Bill 
of 1867 is, I believe, the growing conviction of serious 
observers. The old healthy forces of English life no 
doubt still act, and on great occasions they will prob- 
ably do so with irresistible power ; but in normal times 
they act more feebly and more uncertainly, and are 
more liable to be overborne by capricious impulses and 
unreasoning fluctuations. The evil of evils in our 
present politics is that the constituencies can no longer 
be fully trusted, and that their power is so nearly abso- 
lute that they have an almost complete control over the 
well-being of the Empire. 

One of the great divisions of politics in our day is 
coming to be whether, at the last resort, the world 
should be governed by its ignorance or by its intelli- 
gence. According to the one party, the preponderat- 
ing power should be with education and property. 
According to the other, the ultimate source of power, 
the supreme right of appeal and of control, belongs 
legitimately to the majority of the nation told by the 
head — or, in other words, to the poorest, the most igno- 



26 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

rant, tlie most incapable, who are necessarily the most 
numerous. 

It is a theory which assuredly reverses all the past 
experiences of mankind. In every field of human en- 
terprise, in all the competitions of life, by the inexorable 
law of Xature, superiority lies with the few, and not 
with the many, and success can only be attained by 
placing the guiding and controlling power mainly in 
their hands. That the interests of all classes should 
be represented in the Legislature ; that numbers as 
well as intelligence should have some voice in politics, 
is very true : but unless the government of mankind 
be essentially different from every other form of human 
enterprise, it must inevitably deteriorate if it is placed 
under the direct control of the most unintelligent 
classes. Xo one can doubt that England has of late 
years advanced with gigantic strides in this direction. 
Yet, surely nothing in ancient alchemy was more irra- 
tional than the notion that increased ignorance in the 
elective body will be converted into increased capacity 
for good government in the representative body ; that 
the best way to improve the world and secure rational 
progress is to place government more and more under 
the control of the least enlightened classes. The day 
will come when it will appear one of the strangest facts 
in the history of human folly that such a theory was re- 
garded as liberal and progressive. In the words of Sir 
Henry Maine, ' Let any competently instructed person 
turn over in his mind the great epochs of scientific in- 
vention and social change during the last two centuries, 
and consider what would have occurred if universal 
suffrage had been established at any one of them. Uni- 
versal suffrage, which to-day excludes free trade from 
the United States, would certainly have prohibited the 
spinning-jenny and the power-loom. It would cer- 



CH. I. THE IRISH ELECTORATE 27 

tainly have forbidden the threshing-machine. It would 
have prevented the adoption of the Gregorian Calendar ; 
and it would have restored the Stuarts. It would have 
proscribed the Koman Catholics, with the mob which 
burned Lord Mansfield^s house and library in 1780 ; 
and it would have proscribed the Dissenters, with the 
mob which burned Dr. Priestley^s house and library in 
1791.^1 

It is curious and melancholy to observe- how Rous- 
seau's doctrine of the omnipotence of numbers and the 
supreme virtue of political equality is displacing in Eng- 
land all the old maxims on which English liberty once 
rested. I have spoken of the great inequalities in the 
qualifications for the suffrage that existed in the United 
Kingdom. They secured a healthy diversity of charac- 
ter in the representatives, and they followed with rough 
but general fidelity the different degrees of political ad- 
vancement. There was one suffrage for the towns, and 
another for the country — one suffrage for England, 
and another for Ireland. All these diversities have 
now been swept away. The case of Ireland is especially 
significant. Ireland was greatly over-represented in 
the Imperial Parliament, and by universal acknowledg- 
ment the Irish representatives formed the diseased spot 
in the parliamentary body, the disaffected and obstruc- 
tive element most hostile to its healthy action. It was 
also absolutely certain that a lowering of the Irish suf- 
frage would aggravate the evil, and introduce into Par- 
liament a larger body of men who were completely 
alienated from the interests of the Empire, and utterly 
indifferent to the dignity of Parliament and the main- 
tenance of the Constitution. No one who knew Ire- 
land doubted that it would throw a still larger amount 



Maine's Popular Government^ pp. 35-36 



28 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

of power into the hands of a poor^ ignorant, and disaf- 
fected peasantry, completely under the influence of 
priests and agitators ; that it would weaken, and in 
many districts virtually disfranchise, loyalty, property, 
and intelligence ; that it would deepen the division of 
classes ; that it would enormously increase the diffi- 
culty of establishing any form of moderate and honest 
self-government, l^othing, indeed, is more certain 
than that the elements of good government must be 
sought for in Ireland in a higher electoral plane than 
in England. The men who introduced and carried 
the degradation of the Irish suifrage were perfectly 
aware of what they were doing. They acted with their 
eyes open ; they justified themselves, in the true spirit 
of the Contrat Social, on the plea that they would not 
allow a political inequality to continue, and they prob- 
ably believed that they were playing a good card in the 
party game. 
J A very similar illustration may be found in the lan- 
guage now commonly held in the Radical party about 
university representation. According to any sane 
theory of representative government, no form of repre- 
sentation can be more manifestly wise. I may here 
once more go to Ireland for an illustration. Nothing 
in the Irish representation is so manifestly wanting as 
a more adequate representation of loyalty and intelli- 
gence in three provinces. Loyal and well-educated 
men are to be found there in abundance ; in nearly 
every form of industry, enterprise, and philanthropy, 
they take the foremost place ; but they have no corre- 
sponding weight in the political representation, as they 
are usually swamped by an ignorant and influenced 
peasantry. Owing to the purely agricultural character 
of the greater part of Ireland, and the steady decadence 
of most of its county towns, the Irish boroughs are 



CH. I. ATTACKS ON EDUCATION 29 

for the most part singularly small and insignificant. 
Among these boroughs a leading place must be assigned 
to the one university constituency. This great Univer- 
sity has for many generations educated the flower of 
the intelligence of Ireland. It has sent into the Im- 
perial Parliament a greater number of representatives 
of conspicuous ability than any other Irish constitu- 
ency. It comprises more than 4,300 electors, and is, 
therefore, even in point of numbers, much more con- 
siderable than many Irish boroughs ; and its voters 
consist of highly educated men, scattered over the 
whole surface of the country, taking a leading part in 
many professions and industries, and coming in close 
contact with an altogether unusual variety of interests, 
classes, and opinions. If the object of representation 
be to reflect faithfully in its variety and due proportion 
the opinions, the interests, and the intelligence of the 
community, what constituency could be more essen- 
tially and more usefully representative ? Yet we are 
now told that, in computing the relative strength of 
parties in Ireland, the University representation must 
be subtracted, as ' it does not represent the nation. "* 
This dignity, it appears, belongs more truly to the illit- 
erates — more than one in five professedly unable even 
to read the names upon the ballot-papers ^ — who, in 
some remote western district, or in some decaying 
county town, are driven like sheep to the polling-booth 
by agitators or priests ! 

Surely it is impossible to exaggerate the fatuity of 
these attacks upon university representation ; and the 
men who make them have rarely the excuse of honest 
ignorance. With many the true motive is simply a 



' Return showing the Number of Persons who voted as Illiterates 
at the General Election of 1892 (Feb. 1893). 



30 dem:ocracy and liberty ch. i. 

desire to extingnisli constituencies which return mem- 
bers opposed to their politics^ and at the same time^ by 
depreciating the great centres of intelligence, to flatter 
the more ignorant voters. It is a truth which should 
never be forgotten, that in the field of politics the 
spirit of servility and sycophancy no longer shows 
itself in the adulation of kings and nobles. Faithful 
to its old instinct of grovelling at the feet of power, it 
now carries its homage to another shrine. The men 
who, in former ages, would have sought by Byzantine 
flattery to win power through the favour of an emperor 
or a prince, will now be found declaiming on platforms 
about the iniquity of privilege, extolling the matchless 
wisdom and nobility of the masses, systematically try- 
ing to excite their passions or their jealousies, and to 
win them by bribes and flatteries to their side. Many 
of those who are doing their best to reduce the influence 
of education and intelligence in English politics are 
highly cultivated men, who owe to university educa- 
tion all that they are, though they are now imitating 
— usually with awkward and overstrained effort — the 
rant of the vulgar demagogue. They have taken their 
line in public life, and some of them have attained 
their ends. I do not think that the respect of honest 
men will form any large part of their reward. 

It is curious how often in modern England extreme 
enthusiasm for education is combined with an utter 
disregard for the opinions of the more educated classes. 
The movement against the influence of property is at 
least as strong as against the influence of education. 
One of the forms that it now chiefly takes is the out- 
cry against plural voting. It is denounced as an abuse 
and an injustice that some great landlord who has 
property in several counties, or in several towns, should 
possess a vote for each constituency in which he pos- 



CH. I. ATTACKS ON PROPERTY 31 

sesses property. To me, at least, it appears that such 
an arrangement is most natural, expedient, and just. 
In each of these localities the voter has considerable 
material interests ; in each of them he pays taxes ; in 
each of them he discharges public duties ; in each of 
them he probably exercises local influence as a land- 
lord or an employer of labour. He takes part in each 
constituency in local charities, in local movements, in 
local business, and represents in each a clearly recog- 
nised, and often very considerable, force. Can there 
be anything more reasonable than that he should have 
in each constituency a voice in the political represen- 
tation ? Can there be anything more irrational than 
to maintain that, in all these constituencies except one, 
he should be denied that minute fraction of political 
power which is accorded to the poorest day-labourer in 
his employment ? Mill and some other advocates of 
universal suffrage have maintained that while every 
one should have a vote, plural voting should be 
largely extended, giving special privileges to special 
qualifications. It would be difficult to enact, and prob- 
ably still more difficult to maintain, such privileges 
under a democratic ascendency ; but plural voting con- 
nected with property is rooted by long-established cus- 
tom in the habits of the country, and though its influ- 
ence is not very great, it does something to make the 
Legislature a true picture and reflection of the forces in 
the country, and to qualify the despotism of simple 
numbers. 

We may take another illustration of a different kind. 
Let the reader place himself in imagination at the 
Guildhall or at St. PauFs, and consider for a moment 
all that is included within a square mile taken from 
these centres. Probably no other spot on the globe 
comprises so many of the forms and elements of power. 



32 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

Think of all tlie wealth, all the varieties of knowledge, 
all the kinds of influence and activity that are concen- 
trated in that narrow space. In the most distant quar- 
ters of the Empire men of enterprise and initiative 
turn to the city of London for assistance ; each fluctu- 
ation of its prosperity is felt to the furthest confines of 
the civilised world. There is scarcely a Government 
that does not owe something to it, and its agencies 
radiate far beyond civilisation, among savage tribes 
and through unreclaimed deserts. It is the great heart 
of the Empire, beating in close, constant, active cor- 
respondence with all its parts. And yet, according to 
the democratic theory, a square mile of the City 
should have exactly the same weight in the political 
system as a square mile of Stepney or of Shadwell. 
Can any one suppose that a theory of representation 
so palpably and grotesquely at variance with the real- 
ity of things has any real prospect of enduring ? 

The complete submission of all taxation to the will 
of a mere numerical majority is an end which we have 
not yet fully attained, but towards which we are mani- 
festly travelling. Every few years something is done in 
this direction, either by lowering the suffrage, or by 
abolishing ex-officio guardians of the poor, or by ex- 
tinguishing plural voting, or by suppressing or w^eak- 
ening property qualifications. The inevitable result 
is to give one class the power of voting taxes which 
another class almost exclusively pay, and the chief 
tax-payers, being completely swamped, are for all prac- 
tical purposes completely disfranchised. As I have al- 
ready noticed, it would be difficult to conceive a more 
flagrant abandonment of that principle about the con- 
nection between taxation and voting which in former 
generations was looked on as the most fundamental 
principle of British freedom. It is curious to find 



CH. I. EFFECTS OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 33 

men who are steadily labouring for this end declaim- 
ing on the iniquity of the aristocracy of the eighteenth 
century in attempting to tax America without her con- 
sent. Democracy pushed to its full consequences places 
the whole property of the country in the hands of the 
poorest classes, giving them unlimited power of help- 
ing themselves. At the same time, under its influence 
the effect of distant considerations on political action 
is steadily diminishing. Very naturally, every re- 
straint of economy under such a system is weakened, 
and the sphere of Government activity and expense is 
rapidly increased. But evils much graver than mere 
extravagance and inequitable taxation are impending 
in a country which has no very extraordinary natural 
resources, and which owes its almost unique economi- 
cal position mainly to its great accumulation of mova- 
ble wealth, and to the national credit which secure 
wealth alone can give. 

It is a saying of the great German historian, Sybel, 
that ' the realisation of universal suffrage in its conse- 
quences has always been the beginning of the end of 
all parliamentarism.^ I believe that a large majority 
of the most serious and dispassionate observers of the 
political world are coming steadily to the same conclu- 
sion. Parliamentary government which is mainly di- 
rected by the educated and propertied classes is an 
essentially different thing from parliamentary govern- 
ment resting on a purely democratic basis. In all the 
instances in which this form of government has been 
conspicuously successful, the representative body was 
returned on a restricted suffrage. This is manifestly 
true of the British Parliaments of the past. The Ital- 
ian Parliaments which displayed such eminent wisdom 
and forbearance after the war of 1859 and after the 
death of Cavour : the Austrian Parliaments which car- 



34 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ried the singularly wise and moderate legislation tliat 
has transformed Austria from a reactionary despotism 
into one of the best-governed countries in Europe ; 
the Belgian Parliaments whicli^ in spite of furious re- 
ligious animosities^ established among a French-speak- 
ing population constitutional government which en- 
dured without organic change for sixty years, and 
which their more brilliant neighbours have wholly 
failed to rival ; the Dutch Parliaments, which repre- 
sent a country where self-government has long been 
as perfectly attained as in any portion of the globe — 
were all elected on a very high suffrage. All these na- 
tions have during the last years either entered upon 
the experiment of democracy or are now trembling on 
the verge. The result is already very apparent. In 
Italy, where the experiment has been longest tried, it 
has already led to a great and manifest deterioration 
in public life. In Belgium, its first effect was to break 
up the Parliament into groups, and to shatter the 
power of the Moderate Liberals. 

In several countries pure democracy has been con- 
nected with extreme instability of government, with 
rapidly increasing taxation and debt, with broken 
credit, with perpetual military insurrections, with con- 
stantly recurring alternations of anarchy and despotism. 
In Mexico, it has been computed that in the thirty- 
two years between 1821 and 1853 no less than forty- 
eight different forms of government succeeded each 
other. 1 In Spain, democracy in its most exaggerated 
form has been repeatedly adopted. There was an ex- 
tremely democratic constitution established in 1812, 
overthrown in 1814, re-established in 1820, again de- 
stroyed in 1823. After a long succession of insurrec- 



' See Burke's Life of Juarez, p. 3. 



CH. I. EFFECTS OF UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE 35 

tions and constitutional vicissitudes, which it is un- 
necessary to recount, universal suffrage was established 
by the Republican revolution of 1868. It prevailed, 
in spite of several revolutions of power, till 1877, and 
during this time the credit of the country was irre- 
trievably ruined by the immense increase of the debt. 
In 1877 a high property electoral qualification was es- 
tablished. In 1887 it was somewhat modified. In 
1890 universal suffrage, chiefly qualified by a two years'* 
residence, was re-established.^ In many cases where 
universal suffrage exists it has been rendered nugatory 
by the success with which the governing power has 
been able to manage and to drill it. There are said to 
have been instances where a regiment of soldiers has 
been marched to the poll for the purpose of securing 
the majority for the Government candidate. The sys- 
tem has probably been least dangerous in countries 
like Germany and the United States, where the powers 
of the representative body are greatly limited, or in 
new and distant countries, inhabited by thinly scat- 
tered, prosperous, and self-reliant colonists, and where 
there are no old institutions to be destroyed. Yet, 
even in these cases the abuses and dangers that flow 
from it are very apparent. 

France, which more than any other country claims 
the paternity of this form of government, deserves our 
special attention. In one important respect she seemed 
peculiarly fitted for it, for the great division of landed 
property secured a strong conservative basis, and erected 
the most formidable of all barriers against socialistic in- 
novations. She was also, on account of her almost 
stationary population, much less exposed than other 
European nations to that pressure of population on 



Dareste, Constitutions Modernes, i. 617, 619, 626. 



36 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

means of subsistence which is one of the chief causes 
of political disturbances. At the Eevolution of 1848 
she passed at a single bound from an electorate of about 
225^000 ^ voters to universal manhood suffrage. For a 
few months the new electors turned with an overwhelm- 
ing enthusiasm to Lamartine. At a time when France 
was peculiarly rich in great men he was pre-eminently 
the wonderful man of his age, possessing nearly all the 
qualities that are most fitted to dazzle great masses of 
men, though, unfortunately, not those which are most 
needed for the wise guidance of affairs. As a poet, he 
was by universal consent among the very greatest 
France had ever produced, and few men in all French 
literature have wielded the noble instrument of French 
prose with such consummate genius and skill. His 
* History of the Girondins,^ untrue, inaccurate, and 
misleading as it is, had, probably, a greater influence 
on immediate politics than any other historical work 
that has ever been written, and the passionate enthusi- 
asm it aroused contributed very largely to the Revolu- 
tion. He combined, too, as no one has done before or 
since, the most splendid literary gifts in poetry and 
prose with the power of enthralling assemblies by his 
spoken words, swaying and restraining the passions of 
vast multitudes of excited men. In a great crisis he 
proved brave, honest, humane, and well-meaning, and 
he could judge large social questions with wisdom and 
moderation ; but he had neither the true strength nor 
practical talent that are needed in the government 
of men, and he was apt to be led astray by a childlike 
and unrestrained vanity. 

His popularity was for a time so great that ten de- 
partments and more than two millions of voters simul- 



Clere, Hist, clu Suffrage Universel^ p. 59. 



CH. I. UNIVERSAL SUFFRAGE IN FRANCE 37 

taneoiisly elected him to tlie National Assembly^ with- 
out any solicitation on his part. But his star soon 
faded : socialistic attacks on property begaii to dominate 
at Paris, and under the terror of these attacks the great 
mass of voters began to turn towards a saviour of so- 
ciety. The election, by an enormous majority, of Louis 
Napoleon as President in December 1848, clearly fore- 
shadov/ed the future, and the extremely menacing char- 
acter which the Paris elections assumed led to the law 
of 1850, which considerably restricted the suffrage. It 
made three years^ residence in the constituency neces- 
sary for an elector, and it provided precise and stringent 
rules by which that residence must be ascertained. In 
spite of a furious opposition from the Eadical party, 
this law was carried by 433 to 2-40, and it is said to 
have disfranchised more than three millions of voters, 
or about a third part of the electorate.^ 

Universal suffrage had lasted just two years ; but in 
the conflict which ensued between the Legislative As- 
sembly and the President, the latter clearly saw that it 
would be his best weapon. By a stroke of true politi- 
cal sagacity he sent down, in November 1851, a power- 
fully written presidential message, calling upon the 
Assembly to repeal the law of 1850, and to restore their 
franchise to the three million voters. The Chamber 
received the message with some consternation, and after 
an agitated debate it resolved by a majority of seven to 
maintain the existing law. Less than a month later 
came the Coup d'Etat of December 2, Avhen the chief 
statesmen and generals of France were arrested in their 
beds and carried in the dark winter morning to prison ; 
when the Chamber was peremptorily dissolved ; when 
its members, on their refusal to obey, were led between 



Clere, pp. 92-9G. 



38 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

files of soldiers to the barracks, and thence conducted 
to prison ; when all resistance was crushed by military 
force, martial law, and wholesale deportations. One of 
the first acts of Louis Napoleon was to announce in the 
proclamation that dissolved the Chamber that the elec- 
toral law of 1850 was annulled and universal suffrage 
re-established. Two days after the Coup d^Etat it was 
sanctioned by a plebiscite of the army, and within three 
weeks of the same event, when the greater part of 
France was still under severe martial law, the act of 
the President was ratified by universal suffrage. Nearly 
eight millions of electors are said to have voted for 
him. 

From the Coup d'Etat of December 2 universal suf- 
frage was duly installed in France. Another plebiscite, 
which took place in November 1852, made the Prince- 
President Emperor ; while a fourth, only a few weeks 
before the outbreak of the disastrous war of 1870, 
once more sanctioned by overwhelming majorities the 
imperial rule. During the whole of this reign the Leg- 
islative Assemblies were elected by universal suffrage, 
yet during the greater part of it the government was 
an almost absolute despotism. L^niversal suffrage was 
drilled and disciplined into the most obedient of ser- 
vants. Every official, from the highest to the lowest, 
was turned into an electioneering agent. The limits 
of constituencies were arbitrarily enlarged, modified, or 
contracted to secure the success of the Government can- 
didate. All the powers of administration were system- 
atically and openly employed in directing votes. Each 
constituency was taught that its prospect of obtaining 
roads, or bridges, or harbours, or other local advantages 
depended on its support of the Government, and that if 
the official candidate succeeded he would have the pow- 
er of distributing among his supporters innumerable 



CH. 1. THE LIBERAL EMPIRE 39 

small Government places, privileges and honours. The 
powers of the Legislative Assembly were extremely lim- 
ited. They came to little more than a right of sanc- 
tioning laws submitted to it by the Government, and 
voting taxes under great restrictions. Until 1860 its 
debates were not even fully reported, and for several 
years the Opposition consisted of five men. 

In 1867 and 1868 the whole system was suddenly 
changed. The Emperor called one of the members 
of the old Opposition to power, and made a bold 
attempt, by large and liberal measures, to transform 
the character of the Empire. The right of inter- 
pellation was conceded to the Chamber. Liberty of 
the press, in almost the widest measure, and a large 
measure of liberty of meeting, were accorded, and the 
fierce political life which had been for some seventeen 
years suppressed burst out with a volcanic fury. Those 
who knew France in the last days of the Empire will, 
I think, agree with me that there has never been a 
more violent, a more dangerous, or more revolutionary 
press than then prevailed. The hope that active poli- 
ticians would let bygones be bygones, and accept the 
compromise of a liberal empire, soon waned. Furious 
attacks on the main pillars of society attained an enor- 
mous popularity, and the very foundations of the Em- 
pire were persistently assailed. It was at this period 
that the works of M. Tenot on the Coup d^Etat exer- 
cised their great influence. The demonstrations at the 
tomb of Baudin, who had been shot on a barricade in 
December 1851, displayed the same spirit ; and the de- 
fiant eloquence of Gambetta in defending those who 
were accused of riot in connection with these demon- 
strations first brought that tribune into public notice. 
The Emperor, not unnaturally, refused to abandon the 
whole system of official guidance at the election of the 



40 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

Chamber which met in 1869, and universal suffrage 
again returned a great majority in his favour. But 
the entire Parisian representation was v/on by the Op- 
position, and a great portion of it by its most violent 
and irreconcilable wing, while in the whole Chamber 
not much less than a third of the members and a great 
preponderance of the parliamentary talent were in op- 
position to the Government. 

Most good observers felt that a state of things had 
been called into existence which could not possibly 
last. The Emperor, in opening the Chamber, while 
deploring the growth of subversive and anarchical pas- 
sions, declared his determination to persevere in the 
path he had chosen, and, although he refused to aban- 
don his action over the constituencies, and expressly 
reserved to himself the right of always appealing to his 
people independently of his ministers, he greatly en- 
larged the powers of the Assembly. In conjunction 
with himself it now obtained the right of initiating 
laws ; it obtained the fullest powers of amending them, 
and the ministers became responsible to it. The Con- 
stitution was denounced by the Radical party as a 
worthless mockery, but it was sanctioned by the Ple- 
biscite of 1870. There were about 7,350,000 votes in 
favour of the Government, and rather more than 
1,500,000 votes against it. 

There can be little doubt that the subversive pas- 
sions that had been aroused and the grave internal dan- 
gers that had arisen bore a great part in impelling the 
Government into the disastrous Franco-German War. 
There can be as little doubt that the same causes vastly 
aggravated the calamity, for it was the fear of revolu- 
tion that prevented the Emperor from falling back on 
Paris after the first defeat. When the news of Sedan 
arrived, and the people of Paris learnt that the Em- 



CH. I. OVERTHROW OF NAPOLEON III. 41 

peror and his whole army were prisoners in the hands 
of the Prussians, the Eepuhlican party saw that their 
hour had arrived. Instead of rallying around the Em- 
press, they at once, on their own authority, destroyed 
the Government which universal suffrage had so fre- 
quently and so recently ratified, and drove the Regent 
into exile. Few things in French history are more 
mournfully significant than that the streets of Paris 
were illuminated the night after the disaster of Sedan 
was known. In the eyes of the party which now ruled, 
the triumph of the Republic more than compensated 
for the most terrible calamity that had ever befallen 
their country. One of the principal streets in Paris 
still bears the name of the Fourth of September, the 
day when this revolution was accomplished. It is, ap- 
parently, still regarded by some Frenchmen as a day of 
which they may be proud. 

It deprived France of a settled Government at the 
moment when such a Government was most imperi- 
ously needed, and one of its most certain results was 
the useless prolongation of a hopeless war. There is 
little doubt that if the Empire had survived Sedan 
peace would have speedily been made, and, although 
Strasburg was irrevocably lost, Metz would have been 
saved ; the war indemnity would have been far less ; 
the vast expenditure of life and property and human 
suffering that marked the later months of the war 
would have been prevented, and France might have es- 
caped the most hideous, shameful, and wicked of all 
insurrections — the Communist rising against a French 
Government under the eyes of a victorious invading 
army. 

Happily, in this dark crisis of her fate France found 
a really great man, who in intellectual stature seemed 
to tower like a giant among his contemporaries ; and it 



43 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

is a curiously significant fact that he was one of the 
few suryiying statesmen who had been formed in the 
parliamentary conflicts under Louis Philippe, before 
the millennium of uniyersal suffrage had dawned upon 
the land. 

It is, perhaps, somewhat rash to discuss the Goy- 
ernment which ensued, under which France still sub- 
sists. In the rapidly changing kaleidoscope of French 
politics it may soon take a new form, and something 
may easily occur which will giye it a complexion some- 
what different from my present judgment. Still, 
twenty-three years haye elapsed since 1870 and the time 
at which I am writing, and this space is long enough 
to furnish us with some general conclusions. The 
French Republic is, not only in form, but in reality, a 
Goyernment of uniyersal suffrage, acting with yery lit- 
tle control. Its democratic character is chiefly qualified 
by the position of the Senate, which has some special 
elements of strength, that will be considered in another 
chapter. The position of the President was for some 
time not yery clearly determined. As interpreted by 
Thiers it carried with it great goyerning powers. 
Thiers was, indeed, essentially his own prime minister ; 
he insisted upon the Chamber carrying out his policy ; 
he corresponded directly with foreign ambassadors ; he 
held the threads of foreign policy so exclusiyely in 
his own hands that the whole question of the eyacua- 
tion of the territory was entirely managed by him, 
without reference to his ministers, and it is said that 
no documents relating to it were found in the Ministry 
of Foreign Affairs.* His ascendency, howeyer, was 
mainly due to his great personality and reputation, and 
after his resignation, and especially after the constitu- 



Chaudordy, La France en 1889, p. 191. 



CH. I. THE FRENCH PRESIDENCY 43 

tional laws of 1875, the Erencli President assumed a 
position very little different from that of a constitu- 
tional monarch. Unlike the American President, un- 
like the French Emperor, the President does not owe 
his position to the direct and independent action of 
universal suffrage. He is elected by the Senate and 
Chamber of Deputies voting together. All his acts 
have to be countersigned by a minister. His ministers 
fall before a vote of the Assembly, and he cannot even 
dissolve the Chamber of Deputies without the assent of 
the Senate. The Government is, therefore, wholly 
without that strong executive which is one of the most 
distinguishing characteristics of the great American re- 
public. 

Whatever else may be said of this Government, it 
has certainly not proved a brilliant one. Few French 
Governments have produced or attracted so little emi' 
nent talent, or have been, for the most part, carried on 
by men who, apart from their official positions, are so 
little known, have so little weight in their country, 
and have hitherto appealed so feebly to the imagina- 
tions of the world. As it seems to me, one of the 
characteristic features of our time is the absence of any 
political ideal capable of exciting strong enthusiasm. 
Political restlessness and political innovation are abun- 
dantly displayed, but there is nothing resembling the 
fervid devotion and the boundless hopes which the ad- 
vent of democracy excited at the close of the eighteenth 
century. Democracy has completely triumphed in two 
forms — the American and the French — and we see it 
fully working before us. Men may like it or dislike 
it, but only rare and very peculiarly moulded minds 
can find in the Government of either republic a subject 
for real enthusiasm. The French Revolution, in its 
earlier days, excited such an enthusiasm nearly to the 



44 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

point oi madness^ and in 1830 and 1848 French poli- 
tics exercised an almost irresistible attraction over 
surrounding countries. It has been one of the achieve- 
ments of the present Republic to destroy this fanati- 
cism. With our closer insight into Am.erican and 
French democracy^, forms of government seem to have 
lost their magnetic power. The ideals and utopias 
that float before the popular imagination are of another 
kind. They point rather to great social and industrial 
changes, to redistributions of wealth, to a dissolution 
of the present fabric of society. 

I do not know that this is altogether an evil. There 
is a constant tendency in the human mind to expect 
too much from Governments, and brilliancy in these 
spheres is often sought by violent constitutional in- 
novations or military adventure. At the same time, 
when the Government of a country fails to excite en- 
thusiasm, or even interest, there is apt to be some de- 
cline of patriotism, and there is much danger that the 
craving for excitement, which is so deeply implanted 
in human nature, and certainly abundantly present in 
French nature, may some day burst out in very dan- 
gerous forms. It has often been said that one of the 
causes of the popularity of military adventure in great 
despotisms is the absence of any interest in ordinary 
public life. In the light of the present condition of 
France, it is exceedingly curious to read the speeches 
of Lamartine, Cremieux, and the other men who 
played the chief part in the Revolution of 1818. The 
charge which they brought against the Government of 
Louis Philippe was much less that it was guilty of any 
positive fault, than that it failed to give France the 
brilliancy and the prominence in Europe which were 
her due. She appeared, they contended, like a dowdy, 
ill-dressed figure in the concert of nations. Yet, who 



CH. I. THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 45 

can doubt that at that period the amount of brilliant 
talent in French public life was incomparably greater 
than at present ? 

The characteristic function, however, of government 
is business, and a Government that administers affairs 
with steady wisdom, tolerance, and uprightness may 
well be pardoned if it does not appeal to the more 
poetic side of human nature. I suspect, however, that 
most impartial judges will greatly doubt whether 
modern French democracy fulfils these requirements. 
One of its most conspicuous features has been its ex- 
treme, its astonishing ministerial instability. Between 
1870 and the closing days of 1893, when I write these 
lines, France has had no less than thirty-two ministries. 
It may well be doubted whether a form of government 
which leads to such instability can be destined to en- 
dure, and whether it is compatible with that continuity 
of policy which is one of the most essential elements of 
national greatness. One of the causes that make the 
power of Russia in the world so formidable is the steady 
persistence of its foreign policy. Designs that may be 
traced to Peter the Great have been steadily pursued, 
and in the whole period from 1816 to 1895 only three 
ministers — Nesselrode, Gortschakoff, and Giers — have 
directed the foreign policy of the Empire. The great 
lines of French foreign policy were pursued with dif- 
ferent degrees of energy and success, but with unde- 
viating persistence, by Henry IV., by Richelieu and 
Mazarin, by Louis XIV., and by Cardinal Fleury. It 
is probable that in France, as in most democracies, the 
permanent service includes men greatly above the aver- 
age which universal suffrage has brought to the front, 
and it is in this service that the old administrative tra- 
ditions are preserved and the chief elements of good 
government are to be found. A good permanent ser- 



46 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

vice has often saved a country when its nominal rulers 
are utterly untrustworthy. But, excellent as the ser- 
vice has been, and, I believe, in many of its branches 
still is, in France, it is scarcely possible that it should 
not have been profoundly affected by constant fluctu- 
ations among its chiefs. Partly by a desire to weed out 
all officials who were not in accordance with the strict- 
est Republican doctrine, and partly by the imperious 
desire felt by succeeding ministries to provide for their 
followers, a system of change has grown up in French 
official life much like that which has done so much to 
degrade American politics.^ It is not, it is true, car- 
ried to the same extreme, but it has introduced much 
instability into spheres where steady continuity is of 
the highest importance. 

It produces not only the evil of inexperience, but 
also the still greater evil of a lowered tone. No careful 
student of French politics can fail to have been struck 
with the many instances, since the establishment of the 
Eepublic, in which diplomatists and other officials have 
violated the cardinal article of professional honour by 
publishing to the world secrets they had learned in con- 
fidential Government posts. There can be no surer or 
more ominous sign of deterioration in official life ; and 



1 Speaking of the Civil Ser- prenait la parole en qualite de 

vice in France, M. Leroy-Beau- doyen, disait-il, des directeurs 

lien says : ' Plus la societe ap- generaux du ministere. Ce 

proche du regime deraocratique doyen avait quarante-cinq ou 

pur, plus cette instahilite s'ac- quarante-six ans, si non moins. 

centue. ... La France sur Que de revocations ou de mises 

ce point se fait americaine. prematureesa laretraite n'avait- 

Pour ne citer qu'un petit fait il pas fallu pour amener ce 

qui est singulierenient significa- decanat precoce ! ' {U Eiat et ses 

tif, en 1887 a I'enterrement d'un Fondions^ pp. 05-()6.) See, too, 

haut fonctionnaire du ministere Scherer, La Democratie et la 

des finances, I'un de ses col- France^ pp. 2G-32. 
legues, bien connu d'ailleurs, 



CH. I. THE FRENCH REPUBLIC 47 

it is not difficult to detect its causes. Much has been 
due to the frequency of revolutions, the functionaries 
of one dynasty regarding themselves as relieved from 
all obligation to secrecy when a new form of govern- 
ment was established. Much is also due to the charac- 
ter of the Republic. A prominent French politician 
who was for four years prefect of police published, al- 
most immediately after he left office, two volumes of 
' recollections/ full of anecdotes which would be con- 
sidered in England scandalous violations of official 
confidence. The following significant lines are his 
own defence. ^ After having found that all means 
were good for overthrowing the preceding regimes, the 
men who are now in power, in order to consolidate 
their own authority, claim to appropriate all the tra- 
ditions of the monarchies they have destroyed. Under 
a monarchy, the functionary who returns to private 
life retains obligations of gratitude and fidelity towards 
the dynasty of which he was and will remain the sub- 
ject. But in the system of our institutions, what per- 
manent element is there in the name of which such 
obligations can be imposed on me ? Do I owe anything 
to the existing Cabinet ? Is it not composed of my ad- 
versaries ? Does it not run counter to all the ideas 
that are dear to me ? Does it not obstruct the path to 
the hopes of a better future ? Does it not impose on 
my country a policy which I detest ? ' ^ 

AVe may judge French democracy by other tests. 
Has it raised France to a higher plane of liberty than 
in the past ? The latitude of speaking and writing 
and dramatic representation is, no doubt, extremely 
great, but few modern French Governments, in their 
religious policy and in their educational policy, have 



' Andrieux, Souvenirs d'un Prefet de Police^ ii. 53-54. 



4:8 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

made more determined efforts to force upon great 
masses of the population a system of education they 
detested, or to deprive them of the religious conso- 
lation they most dearly prized. It is very doubtful 
whether the religious policy of Jules Ferry and the 
educational policy of Paul Bert were approved of by the 
majority of Frenchmen. They are^ probably, among 
the many instances in w^hich a resolute and well-organ- 
ised minority have forced their policy on a majority 
who were for the most part languid, divided, or unor- 
ganised. If the opinions of women as well as of men 
be taken into account, as they surely should be in ques- 
tions of religion and education, there can be little 
doubt that the Government policy was that of a not 
very considerable minority. The essential character- 
istic of true liberty is, that under its shelter many dif- 
ferent types of life and character, and opinion and be- 
lief can develop unmolested and unobstructed. Can 
it be said that the French Republic represents this 
liberty in a higher degree than other Governments ? 
It has been called a Government of the working-classes, 
but has it in this respect any extraordinary claim to 
our respect ? On nearly all working-class questions, it 
will be found that France has been preceded on the 
path of progress by British legislation. At the present 
day, the hours of work of the French labourer are in 
general much longer than those of the Englisliman ; 
and I believe the English workmen, who have of late 
years so carefully examined continental legislations, 
have very generally concluded that they have nothing 
to envy in the industrial habits or legislation of the 
Republic. 

Has it, at least, managed with peculiar wisdom the 
resources of France ? The liistory of French finances 
in tlie nineteentli century is a very curious one, and a 



CH. I. HISTORY OF FRENCH FINANCE 49 

brief retrospect Avill not^ I think^ be irrelevant to my 
present purpose^ for it throws much real and instruc- 
tive light on the tendencies of democracies. We may 
start from the year 1814 when the great French war 
was concluded. There was then an extraordinary con- 
trast between the financial condition of Great Britain 
and that of her conquered adversary. Great Britain 
seemed almost crushed by her enormous debt, while 
the debt of France was quite inconsiderable. Partly 
by unsparing levies on conquered nations, and partly 
by his own extremely skilful management of French 
resources, Napoleon had made his great wars almost 
self-supporting. Putting aside the debts of conquered 
or annexed countries, the whole debt of France created 
between 1800 and 1814 amounted only to an annual 
payment in interest of seven millions of francs, to a 
nominal capital of 140 millions, or less than six mill- 
ions of pounds.^ 

The Hundred Days, the war indemnity exacted after 
Waterloo by the Allies for their expense in the war, 
the cost of the army of occupation, the large sums 
which were voted in compensation to the plundered 
^ emigres," ^ and the years of impaired and depreciated 
credit that followed the Eestoration, added largely to 
the debt ; but in the opinion of the best contemporary 
authority on French finance, the Government of the 
Eestoration, in this branch of administration, was one 
of the most skilful, lionourable, and economical France 
has ever known. The credit of the country was never 
so high as in 1830, and although the debt was in- 
creased, it was still very trifling in comparison with the 



1 Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science ^ Rather more than twenty- 

des Finances (ed. 1892), ii. ooG. five millions of francs. Ibid. p. 

495. 



50 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

resources of France. When Louis XVIII. came to the 
throne it involved an annual payment in interest of 
rather more than sixty-three millions of francs. In 
1830 this payment had risen to 164^ millions. Eather 
more than four million pounds had thus been added to 
the annual debt charge.^ 

The reign of Louis Philippe was conducted on much 
the same lines ; and although the debt continued to 
grow, it grew at a far slower rate than the revenue of 
the country. In the eighteen years of his reign Louis 
Philippe added about twelve and a half millions of 
francs, or 500,000/., to the annual debt-charge. AYhen 
his Government fell, in 1848, the French debt was the 
second in Europe ; but it was still only a fourth part 
of that of Great Britain, and if the French monarchy 
had been as stable as that of England, there can be 
little doubt that French credit would have attained 
the English level. ^ 

Then came the democratic Republic of 1848. It 
lasted for three years, and in those three years France 
increased her debt more than in the twenty-five years 
between 1823 and 1848. In 1852, when the Empire be- 
gan, the debt-charge was about 231 millions of francs. 
The French debt was now a little less than a third of 
that of England.^ 

During many years of the Second Empire the wealth 
of France increased perhaps more rapidly than in any 
other period of her history. Much of this prosperity 
was, no doubt, due to the astonishing impulse then 
given to all forms of production by Californian and 
Australian gold, but much also was due to the saga- 
cious energy with which the Government assisted ma- 



' Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science ^ Ibid. pp. 563-64. 
des Finances (ed. 1892), ii. 556-63. '^ Ibid. p. 564. 



CH. I. HISTORY OF FRENCH FINANCE 51 

terial development. The railway system, which had 
been very insufficiently developed under Louis Phi- 
lippe, was now brought to great perfection. A policy 
of judicious free trade immensely stimulated industry, 
and nearly every kind of enterprise was assisted by the 
Government. Vast sums were expended, and usually 
with singular intelligence, on public works. The Con- 
stitution of 1852 reserved to the Emperor the right of 
authorising such works by simple decree, and also the 
right of transferring the credits voted for one depart- 
ment to another. But it was the policy of the Emperor 
through his whole reign to secure the popularity of 
his government by keeping the taxes low and unaltered, 
and meeting the growing expenditure by constant 
loans. Almost the whole cost of the Crimean War, the 
Italian War, and the Mexican expedition, and also an 
immense part of the habitual expenditure of the Gov- 
ernment in times of peace, were raised in this way. 
The extravagance of this system was in part concealed 
by the complexity of French financial administration, 
under which several distinct budgets were usually put 
forward in a year, and also by the device of a very large 
floating debt. One of the most important steps taken 
under the Empire was the introduction of a new sys- 
tem of raising loans. Instead of appealing to a few 
great capitalists, the Emperor threw open the loans by 
direct subscription to the whole nation, dividing them 
in such small portions that nearly all classes could 
afford to subscribe. There is much difference of opin- 
ion about the economical advantages of this plan, but 
there can be no doubt of its extreme popularity. The 
small Government bonds were eagerly taken up, and 
loans became as popular as taxes were nnpopnlar. 
There can also be no doubt that, by interesting an im- 
mense portion of the people in the security of the 



52 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

national debt^ the new system greatly improved the 
national credit and strengthened the conservative ele- 
ment in France. It was computed that in 1830 there 
were at the utmost not more than 125^000 j)ersons in 
France holding portions of the national debt. In 1869 
the number had probably risen to between 700,000 and 
800,000, and in 1881 it is believed to have been more 
than 4,000,000. Either in this way or as owners of 
land the great majority of the heads of families in 
France had a direct interest in the prosperity of the 
State. ^ 

The system of government under the Second Em- 
pire, and especially in its first ten or twelve years, de- 
serves more careful and impartial examination than it 
is likely to receive from the generation which wit- 
nessed the catastrophes of the Franco-German War. It 
was a government with no real constitutional freedom, 
no liberty of the press, no liberty of public meeting. It 
sheltered or produced great corruption, and repressed 
with arbitrary and tyrannical violence political oppo- 
nents. It was detested by the educated classes, by the 
minority of the population who seriously cared for 
political freedom, and, in spite of the enormous sums 
that were expended in public works in Paris, it never 
succeeded in winning the affections of the Parisian 
workmen. On the other hand, the theory of pater- 
nal government exercised in a thoroughly democratic 
spirit had probably never before been carried out with 
equal energy and intelligence. The Emperor contin- 
ually looked for his support to the great inarticulate 
masses of his people. To promote their immediate 
material well-being was the first object of his policy. 



Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science des Finances^ ii. 564-70. 



CH. I. HISTORY OF FRENCH FINANCE 53 

No preceding Government had done so much to stimu- 
late industry in all its forms, to develop latent resources, 
and to provide constant and remunerative employment. 
For many years he succeeded in an eminent degree/ 
and there is very little doubt that the last plebiscite 
which sanctioned his rule reflected the real feelings of 
the numerical majority of Frenchmen. If 100,000 more 
French soldiers had been present on the field of Worth, 
and if the French commander had happened to be a 
man of genius, it is very possible that the Empire 
might have existed to the present day. 

M. Leroy-Beaulieu calculates that in the beginning 
of 1870 — the year of the war — the interest of the 
consolidated debt was about 129 millions of francs, 
or about 5,160,000 pounds sterling more than it 
had been in 1852, when the Emperor ascended the 
throne. The whole debt-charge was 360 millions of 
francs. It represented a nominal capital of rather less 
than twelve milliards of francs, or 480 millions of 
pounds ; and there was in addition a floating debt, 
which at the beginning of 1870 had been recently 
reduced to somewhat less than thirty-two millions of 
pounds.^ 

But the Empire bequeathed to the Republic which 
followed it an appalling legacy. France was compelled 
to pay Germany an indemnity of 200 millions of pounds, 
and her own war expenses were only a very few mill- 
ions below that sum. Nearly the whole of these colos- 



' Full particulars about the The writer had evidently access 

industrial and financial history to the best sources of informa- 

of the first ten years of the tion. 

Empire will be found in a very "^ Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science 

able book, published in 1862, des Finances, ii. 570; Chau- 

called Ten Years of Imperial- dordy. La France en 1889, pp. 

ism in France, bv ' A Flaneur.' 52-53. 



54 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

sal sums were raised by loans between 18v0 and 1874^ 
and added to the permanent capital of the debt. 

The French debt had now greatly outstripped the 
English one. In the early years of the Republic;, and 
especially during the ascendency of M. Thiers^, French 
finances aj)pear to have been managed with economy 
and skill. But in 1878 a new system of prodigality 
began which far exceeded that of the Second Empire, 
and which appears to have continued to the j^resent 
time. A few plain figures will place the situation be- 
fore the reader. The nominal yalue of the debt of 
France according to the Budget of 1892 was about 
thirty-two milliards of francs, or 1,280 millions of 
pounds. The annual debt-charge was about 1,000,- 
250,000 francs, or fifty million pounds — about double 
the present interest of the debt of Great Britain ; and 
in the twelve years of perfect peace from 1881 to 1892 
France increased her debt by more than five milliards 
of francs, or 200 millions of pounds — a sum equal to 
the whole war indemnity which she had been obliged to 
pay to Germany after the war of 1870.' And this 
debt is irrespective of the large and rapidly growing- 
debts of the communes and municipalities. 

A great part of it was, no doubt, incurred for military 
purposes. The creation of a magnificent army ; the for- 
tification of a country which the loss of Strasburg and 
Metz had left very vulnerable, and the formation of a 
vast and costly nav}^, which was probably intended to 
intimidate Italy and overbalance the power of England 
in the Mediterranean, account for much. Much, too, 
was due to the great energy with which the French 



' Leroy-Beaulieu, La Science des Finances, ii. 578-81 ; see, too, 
Martin's Statesman's Year-Book^ 1893 (France). 



CH. I. CORRUPTION AND EXTRAVAGANCE 55 

Republic has pushed on the work of national edu- 
cation ; and the expense of this work was enormously 
increased by the anti-ecclesiastical spirit which insisted 
on building fresh schoolhouses where ecclesiastical 
schools were abundantly supplied, and which refused 
to make any use of the great voluntary institutions es- 
tablished by the Church. But, in addition to these 
things, there has been another great source of expense, 
on which the best French economists dilate with un- 
feigned alarm. It is the enormous and wasteful ex- 
penditure on public works which are, for the most 
part, unremunerative ; which are intended, by giving 
employment, to conciliate the working-classes, and 
which are extended to every department, almost to 
every commune, as a reward for supporting the Gov- 
ernment. Much of this kind was done — especially at 
Paris — under the Second Empire, but the system never 
acquired the enormous extension and extravagance that 
it has assumed under the Republic. The name of M. 
de Freycinet is specially attached to this great develop- 
ment of public works ; but, as might be expected, it 
soon far outgrew the proportions which its author had 
originally assigned to it, though his first idea was to 
spend four milliards of francs, or 160 millions of 
pounds, on railways alone. Very naturally, such a 
system of artificial employment having been started, it 
was found impossible to abandon it. Very naturally, 
every locality desired its share of the beneficence of the 
Government. Countless millions were squandered, 
either in purely Government work, or in trebling or 
quadrupling local subventions, or in rendering gratu- 
itous public services which had once paid their ex- 
penses, or in multiplying inordinately Government 
posts. And the result was that, at a time when severe 
economy was imperiously required, the Republic added 



56 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

to its debt a sum which was little^ if at all^ less than 
the expense of the war of 1870/ 

We can hardly have a more impressive illustration of 
the truth that universal suffrage wholly fails to repre- 
sent the best qualities of a nation. No people in their 
private capacities are more distinguished than the 
French for their btisiness talent, for their combination 
of intelligent indtistry with great parsimony, for the 
courage with w^hich in times of difficulty they retrench 
their expenditure. Yet few Governments have been 
more lavishly and criminally extravagant than those 
which have emanated from universal suffrage in France. 

The forms of corruption which are practised in a 
pure democracy are in general far more detrimental to 
the prosperity of nations than those which existed in 
other days. Sinecures, and corrupt pensions, and 
Cotirt favotirs, and small jobs, and the purchase of 
seats of Parliament, may all be carried very far with- 
out seriously burdening the national revenues. A mill- 
ionaire may squander with reckless profusion his 
shillings and his pence, but as long as the main lines 
of his expenditure are wisely ordered he will find no 
great difference at the end of the year. There are, it 
is true, occasional instances in which the extravagance 
of an individual or of a Court may have ruined a na- 
tion. The most amazing modern example has been 
that of Ismail Pasha, who, in the thirteen years be- 
tween 1863 and 1876, raised the Egyptian debt from a 
little over three millions of pounds to eighty-nine mill- 
ions, and who, mainly througli his personal extrava- 



^ See on tliis su])jec't, Scherer, ro^'-Beaulien, La Science des Fi- 

La De I'll ocraiie et la France^ \)\). nances, ii. 277-78; Chaudordy, 

29-33: Lerov-Beaulien, 1/ Ffat La France en 1889, pp. 54-G2. 
74 ; Le- 



CH. I. CORRUPTION AND EXTRAVAGANCE 57 

gance and reckless gambling, burdened a poor and 
struggling population of six million souls with an 
annual payment for interest of not less than seven mill- 
ions of pounds.^ Such prodigies of colossal selfishness, 
however, are, happily, rare ; and if the world had not 
come to form a wholly false measure of the enormity 
of political crimes, both in rulers and subjects, they 
would lead to something very different from a simple 
deposition. 

Corrupt Governments are not necessarily on the 
whole extravagant. The great corruption w^hich un- 
doubtedly prevailed in the French Government under 
Louis Philippe did not prevent that Government from 
managing French finances with an economy which, in 
the light of later experience, can only be regarded as 
admirable. The jobs and sinecures and pensions of 
the Irish Parliament in the eighteenth century were 
very notorious ; yet Irish statesmen truly said that un- 
til the outbreak of the great French war Ireland was 
one of the least taxed nations, and its Government one 
of the cheapest Governments in Europe. These kinds 
of corruption do much to lower the character of Gov- 
ernments and to alienate from them the public spirit 
and enthusiasm that should support them ; but except 
in very small and poor countries they seldom amount 
to a serious economical evil. Wars, overgrown arma- 
ments, policies that shake credit and plunder large 
classes, laws that hamper industry, the forms of cor- 
ruption which bribe constituencies or classes by great 
public expenditure, by lavish, partial, unjust taxation 
— these are the things that really ruin the finances of a 
nation. To most of these evils unqualified democracies 
are especially liable. 



Milner's Egypt ^ p. 216. 



58 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

Modern Radicalism is accustomed to dilate much 
upon the cost to a nation of endowing princes and sup- 
porting the pageantry of a Court. If there be a lesson 
which repeated and very recent experience clearly 
teaches, it is the utter insignificance of such expendi- 
ture, compared with the cost of any revolution which 
renders the supreme power in a State precarious, low- 
ers the national credit, drives out of a country great 
masses of capital, dislocates its industry and trade, or 
gives a false and extravagant ply to its financial policy. 
Brazil and Spain are poor countries, but the millions 
that have been lost to them by revolutions due to the 
selfish ambition of a few unprincipled adventurers 
would have gone far to pay for all the extravagances of 
all the Courts in Europe. 

France can, no doubt, bear the burden of her enor- 
mous debt better than most countries. Her great na- 
tural advantages, her vast accumulated wealth, the 
admirable industrial qualities of her people, the wide 
distribution among them both of landed property and 
of portions of the national debt, and the fact that this 
debt is mainly held within the country, have all con- 
tributed to the high credit which she still enjoys. 
Great as is her present debt, it bears a much smaller 
proportion to her riches than the English debt did 
to the revenue of Great Britain at the' Peace of 
1815, than the debts of Italy and Russia still bear to 
their national resources. 'No one can doubt that, if a 
policy of strict economy and steady peace is pursued in 
France for the coming half-century, her finances will 
again become very sound. Some portions of her debt 
consist of terminable annuities. The good credit which 
is largely due to the wide diffusion of the debt among 
Frenchmen renders the policy of conversion at dimin- 
ished interest possible ; and in 1950 the railways of 



CH. I. THE FINANCE OF THE REPUBLIC 59 

France will become national property. A country 
which was able in 1894 to convert without difficulty 
280j,000^000/. of stock bearing 4 J per cent, interest into 
3J-per-cent. stock is certainly in no desperate financial 
condition, and the cheapness and abundance of money, 
while it increases the temptation to borrow, dimin- 
ishes the burden of debts. 

But, in spite of all these things, no serious French 
economist can contemplate without alarm the gigantic 
strides with which both her debt and her taxation have 
of late years advanced. Such men well know that few 
national diseases are more insidious in their march, 
more difficult to arrest, more disastrous in their ulti- 
mate consequences. The immediate stimulus to em- 
ployment given by a new loan masks its ultimate and 
permanent elfects, and if the interest alone is paid out 
of taxation, the increase is at first -scarcely perceptible. 
No one can suppose that France is destined for a long 
period to remain at peace, and there is very little pros- 
pect of serious retrenchment in her internal affairs. A 
policy which would involve greatly diminished ex- 
penditure in public works, and, at the same time, con- 
siderable increase of taxation, can never be popular 
with the great uninstructed masses, on whose votes all 
French Governments now depend. Few Governments 
would venture to propose it, and least of all feeble, 
transitory, and precarious Governments, like those 
which have existed in France since 1870. Such Gov- 
ernments necessarily take short views, and look eagerly 
for immediate support. All the lines of policy that 
are most fitted to appeal to the imagination and win 
the favour of an uninstructed democracy are lines of 
policy involving increased expenditure, and the whole 
tendency of European democracy is towards enlarging 
the functions and burdens of the State. When great 



60 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

sections of the j)eople have come habitually to look to 
Government for supj^ort, it becomes impossible to with- 
draw, and exceedingly difficult to restrict, that sup- 
port. Public works which are undertaken through 
political motives, and which private enterjDrise would 
refuse to touch, are scarcely ever remunerative. On 
the other hand, nothing can be more certain than that 
the evil of excessive taxation is not merely to be meas- 
ured by the amount which is directly taken from the 
taxpayer ; its indirect, remote consequences are much 
more serious than its direct ones. Industries which 
are too heavily weighted can no longer compete with 
those of countries where they are more lightly taxed. 
Industries and capital both emigrate to quarters where 
they are less burdened and more productive. The 
credit which a nation enjoys on the Stock exchange 
is a decejotive test, for the finance of the market seldom 
looks beyond the prospect of a few years. A false secur- 
ity gi'ows up. until the nation at last slowly finds that 
it has entered irretrievably on the path of decadence. 

It is scarcely to be expected, under the conditions I 
have described, that the tone of public life should be 
verv high. The disclosures that followed the Panama 
scandals, though the most startling, were by no means 
the only signs that have thrown ominous light on this 
subject. Scherer. in an admirable work, has described 
in detail the action of the present system on French 
political life. Xearly every deputy, he says, enters 
the Chamber encumbered with many promises to indi- 
viduals ; the main object of his policy is usually to 
secure his re-election after four years, and the methods 
by which this may be done are well known. There is 
the branch line of railroad which must be obtained for 
the district : there is the fountain that should be 
erected in the ])nl)lic place : there is. perhaps, even 



CH. I. FRENCH POLITICAL LIFE 61 

the restoration of the parish church to be effected. 
But it is not less important that all public offices which 
carry with them any local influence should be in the 
hands of his supporters. He therefore at once puts 
pressure on the Government^ which usually purchases 
his support by giving him the patronage he desires. 
There is a constant shifting in the smaller local offices. 
Never, it is said^ were there so many dismissals and 
changes in these offices as during the Republic ; and 
they have been mainly due to the desire of the depu- 
ties to make room for their supporters or their chil- 
dren. The idea that a vote is a personal favour, estab- 
lishing a claim to a personal reward, has rapidly spread. 
At the same time, any vote in favour of public w^orks, 
and especially public works in his own constituency ; 
any reorganisation that tends to increase the number 
of men in Grovernment employment, increases the 
popularity of the deputy. The socialistic spirit takes 
different forms in different countries, and this is the 
form it seems specially adopting in France. The old 
idea, that the representative Chamber is pre-eminently 
a check upon extravagance, a jealous guardian of the 
public purse, seems to have almost vanished in demo- 
cratic countries, and nowhere more completely than in 
France. In the words of Leon Say, a great proportion 
of the deputies are, beyond all things, * agents for in- 
stigating to expense,' seeking to secure a livelihood 
out of the public taxes for the greatest possible num- 
ber of their electors. The electoral committee, or, as 
we should say, the local caucus, governs the deputy, 
who, in his turn, under the system of small parliamen- 
tary groups and weak and perpetually fluctuating minis- 
tries, exercises an exaggerated influence on the Admin- 
istration.' 

^ Scherer, La Democraiie et la Fra?ice^ pp. 22-38. 



62 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

We may, in the last place, ask whether democracy 
has given France a nobler and more generons foreign 
policy. French writers have often claimed for their 
country that, more than any other, it has been gov- 
erned by • ideas ; ' that it has been the chief torch- 
bearer of civilisation ; that French public opinion is 
pre-eminently capable of rising above the limits of 
a narrovv' patriotism in order to support, popularise, 
and propagate movements of cosmopolitan liberalism. 
These cosmopolitan sympathies, it must be owned, 
sometimes fade into Utopia, and lead to a neglect 
of the duties of a rational patriotism ; and not un- 
frequently they have either disguised, or served, 
or ended in, designs of very selfish military aggran- 
disement. Still, no impartial student will deny that 
France has for a long period represented in an eminent 
degree the progressive element in European civilisa- 
tion ; that her great influence has usually been thro^^m 
into the scale of freedom, enlightenment, and toler- 
ance. Can this noble position, be now claimed for 
her ? Can it be denied that a policy of rancour and 
revenge has, in the later phases of her history, made 
her strangely false to the nobler instincts of her past ? 
Let the reader follow, in the work of Sir Alfred Mil- 
ner, the account of the way in which, through very un- 
worthy motives, she has obstructed in Egypt all those 
reforms which were manifestly necessary to relieve the 
misery of the Egyptian fellah. Or, let him take a 
more conspicuous instance, and study that most hideous 
story of our century — the Eussian persecution of the 
Jews — and then remember that it was on the morrow 
of this persecution that the French democracy threw 
itself, in a transport of boundless, -unqualified enthusi- 
asm, into the arms of Eussia, and declared by all its 
organs tliat Frencli and Eussian policies were now 



CH. I. FRENCH FOREIGN POLICY 63 

identified in the world. Few sadder^ yet few more sig- 
nificant spectacles have been witnessed in our time 
than this enthusiastic nnion, in 1893^ of the chief 
democracy of Europe with its one great persecuting 
despotism. Could there be a more eloquent lesson on 
the tendencies of democracy than was furnished by the 
joyous and almost puerile delight with which France 
identified herself with the cause of reaction, and re- 
signed to others her old supremacy in European liberal- 
ism ? What a change since the days when George 
Sand heralded the triumph of democracy, in 1848, as 
introducing, by the initiative of France, a new era of 
progress and enlightenment among mankind ; since 
Michelet described France as the armed sentinel of 
Europe, guarding its civilisation against the barbarians 
of the Xorth ; since Lamartine, in lines of exquisite 
beauty, proclaimed the cosmopolitan fraternity which 
was soon to make patriotism itself an obsolete senti- 
ment, too narrow and too harsh for a regenerated hu- 
manity ! 

Nations ! Mot pompeux pour dire barbarie ! 
L'amour s'arrete-t -il ou s'arretent vos pas ? 
Dechirez ces drapeaux, une autre voix vous crie : 
L'egoisme et la haine ont seuls une patrie, 
La Fraternite n'en a pas. ^ 

The conditions of American democracy are essen- 
tially different from those of democracy in France, and 
the effects of this great experiment in government must 
be profoundly interesting to every serious political in- 
quirer. I have already referred briefly to its charac- 
ter. It would be impossible in a book like the j)resent, 
it would be presumptuous on the part of a stranger. 



La Marseillaise de la Paix. 



64 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

and after the great works wliich, in the present gen- 
eration, have been written on the subject, to attempt 
to give a full account of the workings of American 
democracy, but a few salient facts may be gathered 
which will throw much light upon my present subject. 
One of the chief errors of English political writers of 
the last generation in dealing w^th this topic arose 
from their very superficial knowledge of American 
institutions, which led them to believe that the Amer- 
ican Government was generically of the same kind as 
the Government of England, the chief difference being 
that a majority of the people could always carry out 
their will with more prompt, decisive, unrestrained 
efficiency. The English public have at last, it may be 
hoped, learned to perceive that this notion is radically 
false. In England, a simple majority of Parliament is 
capable, with the assent of the Crown, of carrying out 
any constitutional change, however revolutionary ; and 
the House of Commons, in practice, has absorbed to 
itself all the main power in the Constitution. A 
chance majority, formed out of many different political 
fractions, acting through different motives, and with 
different objects, may change fundamentally the Con- 
stitution of the country. The Eoyal veto has become 
wholly obsolete. The Eoyal power under all normal 
circumstances is exercised at the dictation of a ministry 
which owes its being to the majority of the House of 
Commons, and if the Crown can occasionally exercise 
some independent political influence, it can only be in 
rare and exceptional circumstances, or in indirect and 
subordinate ways. The House of Lords has, it is true, 
greater power, and can still, by a suspensive veto, delay 
great changes until they are directly sanctioned by the 
constituencies at an election. But after such sanction 
it is scarcely possible that such changes should be re- 



CH. I. AMERICAN AND ENGLISH DEMOCRACY 65 

sisted, however narrow may be the majorities in their 
favour, however doubtful may be the motives by which 
these majorities were obtained. 

In America the position of the House of Representa- 
tives is widely dilferent from that of the House of 
Commons. It is a body in which the ministers do not 
sit, and which has no power of making or destroying a 
ministry. It is confronted by a Senate which does not 
rest on the democratic basis of mere numbers, but 
which can exercise a much more real restraining power 
than the House of Lords. It is confronted also by a 
President who is himself chosen ultimately by manhood 
suffrage, but in a different way from the House of Rep- 
resentatives, and who exercises an independent power 
vastly greater than a modern British sovereign. It is, 
above all, restricted by a written Constitution under 
the protection of a great, independent law court, which 
makes it impossible for it to violate contracts, or to in- 
fringe any fundamental liberty of the people, or to 
carry any constitutional change, except when there is 
the amplest evidence that it is the clear, settled wish of 
an overwhelming majority of the people. No amend- 
ment of the Federal Constitution can be even proposed 
except by the vote of two-thirds of both Houses of Con- 
gress, or of an application from the legislatures of two- 
thirds of the several States. No amendment of the 
Federal Constitution can become law unless it is rat- 
ified, in three-quarters of the States, by both Houses in 
the local legislatures, or by conventions specially sum- 
moned for that purpose. As a matter of fact, all 
amendments of the Federal Constitution have been rat- 
ified by the State legislatures ; none of them have been 
submitted to conventions. 

Changes in the constitutions of the different States 
may be effected in different ways, but never by a sim- 



66 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

pie majority of a single legislature. In a few States, it 
is true, such a majority may propose such an amend- 
ment ; but it always requires ratification, either by a 
popular vote, or by a subsequent legislature, or by 
both. In most States majorities of two-thirds or three- 
fifths are required for the simple proposal of a constitu- 
tional amendment, and in a large number of cases ma- 
jorities of two-thirds, or three-quarters, or three-fifths, 
are required for the ratification. There is usually, 
however, a second method provided for revising or 
amending a State constitution, by means of a conven- 
tion which is specially called for this purpose, and 
which proposes changes that must be subsequently rat- 
ified by a popular vote. ^ 

The American Constitution, indeed, was framed by 
men who had for the most part the strongest sense of 
the dangers of democracy. The school of American 
thought which was represented in a great degree by 
Washington and John Adams, and still more emphati- 
cally by Grouverneur Morris and Alexander Hamilton ; 
which inspired the Federalist and was embodied in the 
Federalist party, was utterly opposed to the schools of 
Eousseau, of Paine, and even of Jefferson, and it has 
largely guided American policy to the present hour. It 
did not prevent America from becoming a democracy, 
but it framed a form of government under which the 
power of the democracy was broken and divided, re- 
stricted to a much smaller sphere, and attended with 
far less disastrous results than in most European coun- 
tries. Hamilton, who was probably the greatest polit- 
ical thinker America has produced, was, in the essen- 



> A detailed acconnt of the quired in Foreign Legislatures 

metliods of clianging tlie State for changes in the constitution, 

constitutions will l)e found in a presented to the House of Lords, 

Report on the Majorities re- April 1893. 



CH. 1. AMERICAN RESTRICTIONS OF DEMOCRACY 67 

tials of his political thought, quite as conservative as 
Burke, and he never concealed his preference for mon- 
archical institutions. Democratic government, he be- 
lieved, must end in despotism, and be in the meantime 
destructive to puj)lic morality and to the security of 
private property.^ 

To the eminent wisdom of the Constitution of 1787 
much of the success of American democracy is due ; 
but much also must be attributed to the singularly 
favourable circumstances under which this great ex- 
periment has been tried. A people sprung mainly 
from an excellent British stock, and inheriting all the 
best habits and traditions of British constitutional 
government, found themselves in possession of a terri- 
tory almost boundless in its extent and its resources, 
and free from the most serious dangers that menace 
European nations. The habits of local government, 
the spirit of compromise and self-reliance, the strong 
moral basis which Puritanism never fails to establish, 
were all there, and during a great portion of American 
history emigration was attended with so many hard- 
ships that few vien who did not possess more than aver- 
age energy and resource sought the American shore. 
At the same time a vast unpopulated, undeveloped 
country opened limitless paths of adventure, ambition, 
and lucrative labour, dispersed many peccant humours, 
attracted and employed much undisciplined and vol- 
canic energy which, in other countries, would have 
passed into politics and bred grave troubles in the 
State. The immense preponderance of industrialism 
in American life is, indeed, one of its most character- 
istic features, and its influence on politics has been by 
no means wholly good. It has contributed, with other 



* Van Buren, Political Parties in the United States^ pp. 80, 83. 



68 DEMOCRACY AI^D LIBERTY ch. i. 

causes^ to place political life on a lower plane^ diverting 
from it the best energies of the country ; but it has 
also furnished great safety-valves for discontented 
spirits and unregulated ambitions. The country was 
so situated that it was almost absolutely self-support- 
ing, and had no foreign danger to fear. It might al- 
most dispense with a foreign policy. It required no 
considerable army or war navy ; and it has been able 
steadily to devote to the maintenance of an excellent 
system of national education the sums which, in less 
happily situated countries, are required for the pur- 
poses of self-defence. Although America has expe- 
rienced many periods of acute commercial crisis and de- 
pression, the general level of her well-being has been 
unusually high. Property has been from the first very 
widely diffused. Her lower levels in their standard of 
comfort more nearly resemble the middle than the 
lowest class in European countries, and the great 
masses of unemployed pauperism in the large towns, 
which form one of the most serious political and social 
dangers of Europe, have been scarcely known in Amer- 
ica until the present generation. 

The chief steps by which the Grovernment has moved 
in the direction of democracy may be briefly mentioned. 
Although the Constitution in most respects realised 
the anticipations of its founders, their attempt to place 
the President outside the play of party spirit, and to 
make him independent of democratic dictation, sig- 
nally failed. The Constitution provided that each 
State was to choose a number of presidential electors 
equal to its representatives in Congress, and that these 
men should be entrusted with the task of electing the 
President. In accordance with its general policy on 
all matters of election, the Constitution left it to the 
different States to determine the manner of election 



CH. T. ELECTION OF PRESIDENTS AND SENATORS 69 

and the qualifications of these presidential electors ; 
but it enacted that no member of Congress and no 
holder of a Federal office should be eligible. In this 
manner it was hoped that the President might be 
elected by the independent votes of a small body of 
worthy citizens who were not deeply plunged in party 
politics. But, as the spirit of party intensified and the 
great party organisations attained their maturity, this 
system wholly failed. Presidential electors are still 
elected, but they are elected under a distinct pledge 
that they will vote for a particular candidate. At 
first they were nearly everywhere chosen on party 
grounds by the State legislatures. Soon this process 
appeared insufficiently democratic, and they were 
chosen by direct manhood suffrage, their sole duty be- 
ing to nominate the candidate who had been selected 
by the party machine. 

In the senatorial elections the principle of double 
election has proved somewhat more enduring ; but 
iiere, too, considerable transformations have taken 
place. The Senate, as is well known, is composed of 
two senators from each State, chosen for six years by the 
State legislatures, the largest and the smallest States 
being in this respect on a par. For a long time the 
mode of their election varied greatly. ' In some States 
they were chosen viva voce ; in others, by ballots ; in 
some, by a separate vote of each House ; in others, by 
both Houses meeting and voting as one body.'^ By an 
Act of 1866 the method of election has been made uni- 
form, the senators being nominated by a viva voce vote 
in each House ; and if the result is not attained in this 
manner, by a vote of the two Houses sitting together. 
Very naturally and properly, these are party elections ; 

'Ford's American Citizen's May^ual^ i. 13-14. 



70 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

but of late years tlie senators appear to have been 
rarely what tliey were intended to be — the independent 
choice of the State legislatures. ' The machines/ or, 
in other words, the organisations representing the rival 
factions in each State, not only return absolutely the 
members of the State legislature, but also designate 
the rival candidates for the senatorships ; and the 
members of the State legislature are returned under 
strict pledges to vote for these designated candidates. 
This servitude is not as absolute or universal as that 
under which the presidential elections are made, but it 
has gone very far to bring the election of senators 
under the direct control of those knots of wirepullers 
who rule all the fields of American politics, and direct 
and manage universal suffrage.^ In the early stages of 
its history, when the States were very few, the Senate 
was a small body, deliberating in secret, and more like 
a Privy Council or a Cabinet than an Upper Chamber. 
After the first five years of its existence this system of 
secrecy was abandoned ; with the multiplication of 
States the number of senators increased ; and the Sen- 
ate has now the chief characteristics of a legislative 
Chamber, though it possesses certain additional powers 
which are not possessed by the corresponding bodies in 
Europe. 

The many restrictions on the suffrage by which the 
members of the House of Representatives were elected 
at the time of the Revolution have nearly all passed 
away, and America has all but reached the point of 
simple manhood suffrage. Maryland, in the first dec- 
ade of the nineteenth century, led the way,^ and the 
example was speedily followed. The management, re- 



' See Bryce's American Com- 2 Tocqueville, Democratic en 
mon wealth, i. 181-32. Amerique, i. 91. 



CH. I. EXTENSIONS OF THE SUFFRAGE 71 

strictiou, and extension of the suffrage being left 
within the almost complete competence of the several 
States, form the chief field in which revolutionary 
change can be easily effected. The Federal Constitu- 
tion only imposes two restrictions on the competency 
of the States to deal with this subject. The first is, 
that the electors for representatives in each State ' shall 
have the qualifications required for electors of the most 
numerous branch of the State Legislature."* The sec- 
ond, which was an amendment of the Constitution in- 
troduced after the Civil War, and carried at a time 
when the Southern States were still deprived of their 
normal political power, is that no one may be excluded 
from the suffrage ' on account of race, colour, or pre- 
vious condition of servitude.^ The suffrage, it is true, 
is not absolutely universal. Besides the exclusion of 
women, children, criminals, insane persons, and un- 
naturalised immigrants, some easy qualifications of 
residence and registration are usually required ; but 
property qualifications have almost wholly disappeared. 
The actual possession of property is no longer required 
for a voter in any American election, with the excep- 
tion, it is said, of the municipal elections in a single 
district of Rhode Island.^ A tax qualification existed 
in 1880 in six States, but it has since then been abol- 
ished in four of them.^ Some States, however, still 
exclude from the right of voting those who are so il- 
literate that they are not able to read, and paupers 
who are actually supported by the State. With these 
slight and partial exceptions manhood suffrage gener- 
ally prevails. 

^ Hart's Practical Essays on qualification is required from an 

American Governm.ent^ 1893, p. office-holder. 

28. There are still, however, ^ Ibid, 
some cases in which a property 



72 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

As far as I can jiidge^ it seems to have been brought 
about by much the same means in America as in Eu- 
rope. It has not been in general the result of any 
spontaneous demand^ or of any real belief that it is 
likely to improve the Constitution ; but it has sprung 
from a competition for power and popularity between 
rival factions. An extension of the franchise is^ natur- 
ally, a popular cry, and each party leader is therefore 
ready to raise it, and anxious that his rival should not 
monopolise it. It is a policy, too, which requires no 
constructive ability, and is so simple that it lies well 
within the competence of the vulgarest and most ig- 
norant demagogue. A party out of office, and doubt- 
ful of its future prospects, naturally wishes to change 
the character of the electorate, and its leaders calculate 
that new voters will vote, at all events for the first 
time, for the party whicli gave them their vote. We 
are in England perfectly familiar with such modes of 
conducting public affairs, and it is probably no exag- 
geration to say that calculations of this kind have been 
the chief motives of all our recent degradations of the 
suffrage. In one important respect the Federal system 
has tended to strengthen in America the democratic 
movement. Each State naturally wishes to have as 
much power as possible in the Confederation, and an 
amendment of the Constitution which was forced 
through during the temporary eclipse of the Southern 
States provides that while, as a general rule, repre- 
sentatives in Congress shall be apportioned among the 
several States according to their populations, the basis 
of representation in a State shall be reduced in propor- 
tion to the number of such citizens who are excluded 
from the suffrage, * except for participation in rebel- 
lion and other crime.' 

The S3rsteni of popular election has extended through 



Cii. I. THE AMERICAN JUDICIARY 73 

nearly all branches of American life. Perhaps its 
most mischievous application is to the Judicial posts. 
The independence and dignity, it is true, of the Fed- 
eral judges are protected by an article of the Constitu- 
tion. They can only be appointed by the President 
with the consent of the Senate. They hold their office 
during good behaviour ; and they possess salaries which, 
though small if compared with those of English judges, 
enable them to support their position. The Supreme 
Court is one of the most valuable portions of the 
American Constitution, and although even its deci- 
sions have not always escaped the suspicion of party 
motives, it is, on the whole, probably inferior in ability 
and character to no other judicial body on the globe. 
But in the States another system has spread which has 
both lowered and tainted the administration of justice. 
As recently as 1830 the judges in the different States 
owed their appointment to the governors, or to the 
State legislatures, or to a combination of the two. In 
1878, in no less than twenty-four States they were 
elected by a popular vote.^ When it is added that they 
only hold their office for a few years, that they are 
capable of re-election, and that their salaries are ex- 
tremely small, it will not appear extraordinary that the 
judicial body in most of these States should be desti- 
tute of the moral dignity which attaches in England 
to all its branches. Deliberate personal corruption, 
which for generations has been unknown among Eng- 
lish judges, has been in some cases proved, and in 
many cases suspected, in America, and the belief that 
in large classes of cases judges will act as mere parti- 
sans on the bench has extended much further. The 
prevalence of lynch law, which is so strangely discord- 



i. 136. 



74 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ant with the high civilisation of American life^ is 
largely clue to that distrust of justice in many States 
which is the direct, manifest, acknowledged conse- 
quence of the system of popular election. 

No one, indeed, who knows the class of men who 
are wirepullers in the different American factions will 
expect their nominees on the bench to be distinguished 
either for impartiality or integrity. One of the most 
extraordinary instances of organised crime in modern 
history is furnished by the Molly Maguires of Penn- 
sylvania, an Irish conspiracy which, with short inter- 
vals, maintained a reign of terror between 1863 and 
1875 in the anthracite coalfields of that State. The 
innumerable murders they committed with impunity, 
and the extraordinary skill and daring of the Irish de- 
tective who succeeded in penetrating into their coun- 
cils and at last bringing them to justice, form a story of 
most dramatic interest ; but one of the most curious 
facts connected with them is the political influence 
they appear to have obtained. They controlled town- 
ship affairs in several districts ; they applied to their 
own purposes large public funds ; they had a great in- 
fluence in the management of counties ; they were 
courted by both political parties ; and they only failed 
by a few hundred votes in placing one of their body on 
the judicial bench. ^ I can here hardly do better than 
quote the language of Mr. Bryce, who, writing with 
ample knowledge of the subject, is evidently desirous of 
minimising as much as possible the importance of the 
facts which he honestly but reluctantly relates. 

' In a few States,^ he writes, ' perhaps six or seven in 
all, suspicion has at one time or another, within the 



1 See that very curious book, Dewees's The Molly Maguires 
(Philadelphia, 1877), pp. 33, 92-93, 109, 221-29, 29G. 



CH. I. JUDICIAL CORRUPTION 75 

last twenty years, attached to one or more of tlie supe- 
rior judges. Sometimes these suspicions may have 
been ill-founded. But though I know of only one 
case in which they have been substantiated, there can 
be little doubt that in several instances improprieties 
have been committed. The judge may not have taken 
a bribe, but he has perverted justice at the instance of 
some person or persons who either gave him a consid- 
eration or exercised an undue influence over him. . . . 
I have never heard of a State in which more than two 
or three judges were the object of distrust at the same 
time. In one State, viz. New York, in 1869-71 there 
were flagrant scandals, which led to the disappearance 
of three justices of the superior court who had unques- 
tionably both sold and denied justice. The Tweed 
ring, when engaged in plundering the city treasury, 
found it convenient to have in the seat of justice ac- 
complices who might check inquiry into their mis- 
deeds. This the system of popular election for very 
short terms enabled them to do, and men were accord- 
ingly placed on the bench whom one might rather 
have expected to see in the dock — bar-room loafers, 
broken - down attorneys, needy adventurers — whose 
want of character made them absolutely dependent on 
these patrons. . . . They did not regard social cen-, 
sure, for they were already excluded from decent soci- 
ety ; impeachment had no terrors for them, since the 
State legislatures, as well as the executive machinery 
of the city, was in the hands of their masters. . . . 
To what precise point of infamy they descended I can- 
not attempt, among so many discordant stories and 
rumours, to determine. It is, however, beyond a 
doubt that they made orders in defiance of the plainest 
rules of practice ; issued in rum - shops injunctions 
which they had not even read over ; appointed notori- 



76 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ous vagabonds receivers of valuable property ; turned 
over important cases to a friend of their own stamp, 
and gave whatever decision he suggested. ... A 
system of client robbery sprang up, by which each 
judge enriched the knot of disreputable lawyers who 
surrounded him. He referred cases to them, granted 
them monstrous allowances in the name of costs, gave 
tliem receiverships with a large percentage, and so 
forth, they in turn either sharing the booty with him, 
or nndertaking to do the same for him when he should 
have descended to the Bar and they have climbed to 
the Bench. Nor is there any doubt that criminals 
who had any claim on their party often managed to 
elude punishment . . . for governor, judge, attor- 
ney, officials, and police, were all of them party nomi- 
nees. ... In the instance which made much noise 
in Europe — that of the Erie Railroad suits — there 
was no need to give bribes. The gang of thieves who 
had gained control of the line and were ' watering ' the 
stock were leagued with the gang of thieves who ruled 
the city and nominated the judges, and nobody doubts 
that the monstrous decisions in these suits were ob- 
tained by the influence of the Tammany leaders over 
their judicial minions. ^^ 

Such is the state of things which flourished a few 
years ago in full exuberance in the capital of the great 
democracy of the West, and among a people who claim 
to be in the front rank of civilisation, and to have 
furnished the supreme pattern of the democracies of 
the future. Mr. Bryce does all that is in his power to 
soften the picture. He believes that the corrupt 
judges are only a small minority in a few States, and 
that there is no evidence that even the New York 



^Hrycii's American Commnnivealth^ iii. 394-99. 



CH. I. JUDICIAL CORRUPTION 77 

judges, in ordinary commercial cases, where no politi- 
cal interest came into play, and where the influence of 
particular persons was not exerted, decided unjustly or 
' took direct money bribes from one of the parties/ 
He also takes a long historical flight over nearly three 
thousand years for the purpose of collecting parallel 
enormities. Hesiod complained of kings who received 
gifts to influence their decisions. Felix expected 
money for releasing St. Paul. Among the great des- 
potisms of the East judicial corruption has always 
been common. In a single instance since the Revolu- 
tion an English chancellor was found to have taken 
bribes ; and in some of the more backward countries of 
Europe ' the judges, except, perhaps, those of the 
highest court, are not assumed by general opinion to 
be above suspicion.^ 

Such arguments may be left to stand on their own 
merits. Of all the many functions which government 
is expected to discharge, the most important to the 
happiness of mankind is that of securing equal justice 
between man and man. No statesmen were more con- 
scious of this truth than the great men who framed the 
Constitution of the United States ; and, under the 
conditions of their time, they probably provided for it 
almost as perfectly as human prescience could have 
done. It would be a grave injustice to the American 
people to suppose that they were not in general a law- 
abiding people : they have more than once suppressed 
disorder in the States with an unflinching energy and a 
truly merciful promptness of severity which English 
Administrations might well imitate ; and over a great 
part of the States honest justice is undoubtedly admin- 
istered. But no one, I think, can follow American 
history without perceiving how frequently and seri- 
ously the democratic principle has undermined this 



78 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. i. 

first condition of true freedom and progress. As Mill 
justly says, the tyranny of tlie majority is not only 
shown in tyrannical laws. Sometimes it is shown in 
an assumed power to dispense with all laws which run 
counter to the popular opinion of the hour. Some- 
times it appears in corrupt, tainted, partial adminis- 
tration of existing laws. Tyranny seldom assumes a 
more odious form than when judges, juries, and execu- 
tives are alike the tools of a faction or a mob. 

Closely connected with this great abuse has been the 
system of treating all the smaller posts and offices, 
both under the Federal and the State governments, as 
rewards for party services, and changing the occu- 
pants with each change of political power. This is 
the well-known ' spoils system,^ and it has permeated 
and corrupted American public life to its very roots. 
It did not exist in the early days of the Eepublic. 
Washington, in the eight years of his presidency, only 
removed nine officials, and all for definite causes. 
John Adams made the same number of changes. Jef- 
ferson made thirty-nine ; and the three Presidents 
who followed only removed sixteen in the space of 
twenty years. John Quincy Adams, the last of this 
line of Presidents, was in this respect scrupulously just. 
' As he was about the last President,' writes Mr. Gold- 
win Smith, ' chosen for merit, not for availability, so 
he was about the last whose only rule was not party, but 
the public service. So strictly did he preserve the prin- 
ciple of permanency and purity in the Civil Service, that 
he refused to dismiss from office a Postmaster-General 
whom he knew to be intriguing against him.' 

The great evil which was impending was largely pre- 
pared by an Act of 1820, which limited the term of 
office of a vast number of subordinate officials to four 
years, and at the same time made them removable at 



CH. I. THE SPOILS SYSTEM 79 

pleasure. The modern system of making all posts 
under the Government;, however unconnected with 
politics, rewards for party services was organised, in 
1829, by Andrew Jackson. This President may be 
said to have completed the work of making the Amer- 
ican Republic a pure democracy, which Jefferson had 
begun. His statue stands in front of the White House 
at Washington as one of the great men of America, 
and he assuredly deserves to be remembered as the 
founder of the most stupendous system of political cor- 
ruption in modern history. It began on a compar- 
atively small scale. About 500 postmasters were at 
once removed to make room for partisans, and all the 
more active partisans, including, it is said, fifty or 
sixty leading newspaper writers, received places, the 
propagation of Government views through the press 
having now become, according to Webster, ^ the main 
administrative duty.^ In a short time the dismissals 
under this President numbered about 2,000.^ 

This was the beginning of a system which has spread 
like a leprosy over all political life, and to which there 
is, I believe, no adequate parallel in history. It is not 
easy to obtain exact statistics about the extent to which 
it has been practised. A very eminent American 
writer, who is distinguished not only for his high char- 
acter, but also for his scrupulous accuracy of state- 
ment and research, and who has himself taken a prom- 
inent part in the work of Civil Service reform, mentions 
that a few years ago ^ the army of Federal officials was 
roughly estimated at nearly 125,000, drawing annual 
salaries amounting to about eighty millions of dollars.^ 
He notices that in the two years preceding 1887, out 



1 Goldwin Smith, The United States, pp. 192-203 ; Ford's Amer- 
138-40. 



80 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

of 2,359 post-offices known as presidential, about 2,000 
had been changed, and that out of 52,699 lower post- 
office clerks, about 40,000 had been changed. 100 out 
of 111 collectors of Customs, all the surveyors of Cus- 
toms, all the surveyors-general, all the post-office in- 
spectors-in-charge ; 11 out of 13 superintendents of 
mints ; 84 out of 85 collectors of internal revenue ; 65 
out of TO district attorneys ; 8 out of 11 inspectors of 
steam-vessels ; 16 out of 18 pension agents ; 190 out of 
224 local land officers were changed in the space of two 
years, and under a President who had come to office as 
a supporter of Civil Service reform. These are but a 
few illustrations out of many of the manner in which, 
in the w^ords of the writer I am citing, ' office is made 
the coin in Avhich to pay political debts and gain the 
services of political condottieri,' and he estimates that 
this President had '^ dismissed nearly 100,000 public 
servants for political ends.'' ^ 

Another very competent American author, who has 
written the best short account of American govern- 
ment with which I am acquainted, observes that ' in 
the Federal Administration alone there are nearly 90,- 
000 office-holders who have no voice in the administra- 
tion ; but as chiefs of bureaux and clerks are necessary 
for the transaction of business, and as new territory 
is opened up, the number is constantly increasing.'' 
These appointments are systematically filled up, not 
upon the ground of administrative capacity, but ' on 
the basis of nomination, influence, and official favour.^ 
The practice of constant removals has, since Jackson's 
time, ^ been followed by all parties in all elections. 



' See a remarka])lo essay on Koprintod from the Tndepen- 
Mr. Cleveland and Civil 'Ser- dent^ October 18, 1888. 
vice Reform^ by Henry C. Lea. 



OH. 1. • THE SPOILS SYSTEM 81 

great and small, national and local/ A great part of 
this patronage is in the hands of senators and represen- 
tatives, who claim as a right the power of advising the 
President in these appointments ; who ' dictate appoint- 
ments as if the Federal patronage in their State or dis- 
trict was their private property/ and who systemati- 
cally use it to build up political influence and reward 
political services. 

And not only does this system turn into ardent poli- 
ticians countless officials whose duties should place 
them as far as possible out of the domain of party poli- 
tics ; not only does it furnish the staff of the great 
party organisations, and make the desire of obtaining 
and retaining office the main motive in all party con- 
flicts — it also gives rise to the system of political assess- 
ments, ' made on office-holders of all grades, by a per- 
fectly irresponsible committee, to be expended in 
furthering the objects of the party. . . . Although 
nominally such contributions to the campaign fund 
are made ^' voluntarily " by the office-holders, yet their 
true nature is shown by many circumstances. Thus, 
in making its application, the committee fixes the 
amount which each man is to pay. In 1882, 2 per 
cent, of the annual salary was required, and was levied 
on all, from the chiefs of bureaux to the lowest labourer 
in the Government navy yards, and also levied alike on 
Eepublicans and Democrats. Moreover, in case the 
call was not responded to, employes of the committee 
went among the departments and made personal appli- 
cation to each delinquent. By experience the clerk 
knows that he must pay or be discharged, a fact which 
still more strongly brings out the '^^ voluntary " nature 
of the contribution. . . . The committee may ex- 
pend the fund thus collected as it sees fit, and need 
render an account of such expenditure to no man. 



82 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY * ch. i. 

Truth compels us to say that it forms a " corruption 
fund '^ for influencing elections ; and the manner of 
expending it is as vicious and debauching to the public 
service as is the manner of collecting it. This matter 
has also been made the subject of legislation, but with- 
out any remedy being afforded/ ^ 

A third very competent American writer on the Con- 
stitution reminds us that, owing to the increased debt 
and taxation growing out of the Civil War, the number 
of ofhce-holders in the United States quadrupled in the 
period from 1860 to 1870, and that these appointments 
are systematically made through mere party motives, 
and irrespective of the capacity of the claimant. ' This 
system,^ he continues, ' not only fills the 23ublic offices of 
the United States with inefficient and corrupt officials 
in high station, and keeps out of political life the capa- 
ble men who are disinclined to perform party work as 
a condition precedent to accession to office, but it also 
created the same system under those officials as to all 
their subordinates. . . . They were to a very large 
degree, and still are, regularly assessed to pay the polit- 
ical expenses of a campaign. Millions of dollars are 
thus raised from office-holders in the United States at 
every recurring Presidential election, or even local elec- 
tion. . . . Such assessments were paid because they 
knew that their official existence would be terminated 
in the event of a change of Administration, under the 



' Ford's American Citizen's McGuiness's pig proved so pro- 
Manual^ i. 130-41. Mr. Lea ductive in the New York Cus- 
w rites : ' It is in yain that the torn House, when an office is 
TendU'tan Act prohibits the levy- ostentatiously opened in Wash- 
ing of assessments on office- ington, and every clerk is per- 
holders, Mhen circulars from sonally notified that it is ready 
democratic committees are as to receive contributions ' {Mr. 
thick as leaves in Vallombrosa, Cleveland and Civil Service Re- 
when the raffle for the Widow form., p. 4). 



CH. I. THE SPOILS SYSTEM 83 

domination of an adverse party. . . . The evil of 
the abominable "spoils'^ system in the United States 
is not so much the incompetency of the officers — an 
Americanos adaptiveness enables him quickly to learn 
the routine duties of an office — nor in the waste of 
public money (because in a community so rich in pro- 
ductive power as that of the United States the amount 
which peculation can take from it is a burden easy to 
be borne) — but the main evil is that the spoils system 
demoralises both parties, and makes contests which 
should be for principle mainly for plunder/ Under its 
influence, this writer adds, the quadrennial presiden- 
tial elections have become ''mere scrambles for office/' 
It will be observed that this system is very distinctly 
a product of democracy. It is called by its supporters 
the rotation of offices. It is defended on the ground 
that, by short tenures and constant removals, it 02:)ens 
the ranks of official life to the greatest possible number 
of the people ; and although, in the words of Mr. 
Bryce, ' nobody supposes that merit has anything to 
do with promotion, or believes the pretext alleged for 
an appointment, ^ its democratic character and its ap- 
peal to the self-interest of vast multitudes make it 
popular. It is also, as Mr. Bryce notices, a main ele- 
ment in that system of ^machines-made politics which, 
in America, so successfully excludes the more respect- 
able class from political life, and throws its whole man- 
agement into the hands of the professional politicians. 
I can here only refer my readers to the instructive 
chapters in which Mr. Bryce has described the work- 
ing of the ' machine. He has shown how the extreme 



' Sterne's United States Con- ^ American Commonwealth,, 

stitution and History^ pp. 227- ii. 488. 
31. 



84 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

elaboration and multiplication of committees and or- 
ganisations for tlie purpose of accumulating and 
directing votes, as well as the enormous number of 
local elections to office which are conducted on party 
lines, and which all add to or subtract from party 
strength, turn the politics of a State into a business so 
absorbing that no one can expect to have much influ- 
ence in it unless he makes it a main business of his 
life. At the same time, the vast number of men who 
hold office, and the still larger number who are aspir- 
ing to office, furnish those organisations with innumer- 
able agents, who work for them as men work for their 
livelihood, while the tribute levied upon officials sup- 
plies an ample fund for corruption. ' The great and 
growing volume of political work to be done in man- 
aging primaries, conventions, and elections for the 
city. State and national Government . . . which 
the advance of democratic sentiment and the needs of 
party warfare evolved from 1820 down to about 1850, 
needed men who should give to it constant and undi- 
vided attention. These men the plan of rotation in 
office provided. Persons who had nothing to gain for 
themselves would soon have tired of the work. . . . 
Those, however, whose bread and butter depend on 
their party may be trusted to work for their party, to 
enlist recruits, look after the organisation, play elec- 
tioneering tricks from which ordinary pai'ty spirit 
might recoil. The class of professional politicians was, 
therefore, the first crop wliich the spoils system — the 
system of using public offices as private plunder — bore. 
. . . It is these spoilsmen who have depraved and 
distorted the mechanism of politics. It is they who 
pack the primaries and run the conventions, so as to 
destroy the freedom of popular clioice ; they who con- 
trive and execute the election frauds which disgrace 



CH. I. CORRUPTION OF PARTY POLITICS 85 

some States and cities, repeating and ballot-stuffing, 
obstruction of the polls, and fraudulent countings-in. 
. . . The Civil Service is not in America, and can- 
not under the system of rotation become, a career. 
Place-hunting is the career ; and an office is not a 
public trust, but a means of requiting party services, 
and also, under the method of assessments previously 
described, a source whence party funds may be raised 
for election purposes/^ '^What characterises^ Amer- 
ican politicians, ' as compared with the corresponding 
class in Europe, is that their whole time is more fre- 
quently given to political work ; that most of them 
draw an income from politics, and the rest hope to do 
so/ 2 

One very natural result is, that while there is no 
country in the world in which great party contests are 
fought with more energy and tenacity than in America, 
there is no country in the world in which the motives 
that inspire them are more purely or more abjectly 
sordid. Great unselfish causes are, no doubt, advocated 
by groups of politicians in America, as elsewhere, but 
these lie usually within the limits of parties, and are 
not the true causes of party division. In other coun- 
tries it is not so. Selfish and corrupt motives no doubt 
abound ; but in the contest between Liberals and Con- 
servatives, Unionists and Eadicals, in England ; in the 
great dynastic quarrels, or quarrels between monarchy 
and republicanism, between clericalism and anti-cleri- 
calism, between labour and capital, that divide parties 
on the Continent, there is always some real principle at 
issue, some powerful element of unselfish enthusiasm. 
In America this does not appear to be the case. This is 
partly, no doubt, due to the absence of great questions 



Bryce, ii. 485-89. "" Ibid. 399. 



86 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

in a country wliich has few serious relations with 
other nations^ whicli has almost wholly disconnected 
the interests of Churches and religion from, national 
politics, and in which the Constitution opposes insuper- 
able obstacles to organic change. But it is still more 
due to the enormous preponderance in politics of selfish 
interests, and of classes who are animated by such in- 
terests. I have quoted on this subject the emphatic 
language of Mr. Sterne. That of Mr. Bryce is very 
similar. ' Politics/ he says, ' has now become a gainful 
profession, like advocacy, stock-broking, the drygoods 
trade, or the getting up of companies. People go into 
it to live by it, primarily for the sake of the salaries 
attached to the places they count on getting ; second- 
arily, in view of the opportunities it affords of making 
incidental, and sometimes illegitimate, gains. ' ' Ee- 
publicans and Democrats have certainly war-cries, or- 
ganisations, interests enlisted in their support. But 
those interests are in the main the interests of getting 
or keeping the patronage of the Government. Tenets 
and policies, points of political doctrine and points of 
political practice, have all but vanished. They have 
not been thrown away, but have been stripped away by 
time and the progress of events fulfilling some policies, 
blotting out others. All has been lost except office or 
the hope of it.^ ^ 

There is scarcely any subject on which the best men 
in America are so fully agreed as upon the absolute ne- 
cessity of putting an end to this spoils system, if Amer- 
ican public life is ever to be purified from corrui^tion. 
Unfortunately, this system appeals to so many interests 
and such strong passions, and has been so thoroughly 
incorporated in the normal working of both of the 



Bryce, ii. 345, 392. 



CH. I. CIVIL SERVICE REFORM 87 

great parties, that the task of combating it is enor- 
mously difficult, and few active politicians have entered 
into it with real earnestness. There have been frequent 
efforts in this direction. There was an abortive at- 
tempt of Calhoun, in 1839, to prevent a large class 
of Government officers from interfering in elections. 
There were Acts carried in 1853 and 1855 requiring 
examinations for some departments of the Civil Ser- 
vice at AVashington, and another Act was carried in 
1871 ; but they appear to have been little more than a 
dead -letter.' Though the subject was frequently be- 
fore Congress, no really efficacious step was taken till 
the Act called the Pendleton Act, which was carried 
in 1883, and which applied to about 15,000 officials 
out of about 125,000. It introduced into some depart- 
ments the system of competitive examinations, gave 
some real fixity of tenure, and attempted, though ap- 
parently with little or no success, to check the system 
of assessment for political purposes. 

The system of competitive examinations has since 
then been in some degree extended. One of the latest 
writers on American politics says that about 43,800 
servants of the Government, out of nearly 180,000 
persons employed in all civil capacities by the United 
States, are now withdrawn from the spoils system, but 
he doubts much whether democratic opinion is, on the 
whole, in favour of an abandonment of the system of 
rotation and political appointment.^ A considerable 
movement to abolish it has, however, been set on foot, 
and the reformers, who are known under the name of 
Mugwumps, are said to have acquired some real influ- 
ence. In the opinion of Mr. Gilman, the indepen- 



' Ford, i. 141-42 ; Bryce, ii. ^ Hart's Essays on American 

490. Government, pp. 82, 83, 91-9G. 



88 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

dent element^ which is ' opposed to any increase of tlie 
Civil Service of the State or the nation until a great 
reform has been accomplished, beyond dispute, in the 
distribution of the multitude of minor offices/ is, 
^happily, coming to hold more and more the balance 
of power/ 'There is/ he adds, "a powerful and 
growing tendency to take out of politics the public 
charities, the free schools, the public libraries, the 
public parks, and numerous other features of munici- 
pal administration.* To take an oliice ' out of politics,' 
Mr. Oilman very characteristically explains, means ' to 
take it out of corruption into honest}^,' and to treat it 
' as a public trust for the benefit of the whole people.' ^ 
The growth of the number of minor officials, which 
is a natural consequence of the spoils system, and also 
of the prevailing tendency to extend the functions of 
government, is exciting serious alarm. A recent Civil 
Service Commission gives the number of ^ employees ' 
in the postal service of the United States, in 1891, as 
112,800 : the number of other 'employees^ as 70,688. 
There has been, the Commission says, ^a very startling 
growth in the number of Government employees, com- 
pared with the growth of population. . . . The growth 
of a service which can be used for political ends is a 
rapidly increasing menace to republican government/ 
}dr. Gilman quotes the statement of Mr. Curtis, that 
tlie first object of every reformer should be ' to restrict 
still further the executive power as exercised by party/ 
In America, that statesman says, ' the superstition of 
Divine riglit has passed from the king to the party,' 
and tlie belief that it can do no wrong ^ has become the 
practical faith of great nniltitudes." 'It makes the 
whole Civil Service a drilled and disciplined army, whose 



' Gilman's Socialism and the American Spirit (1893), p. 178. 



CH. I. MULTIPLICATION OF OFFICES 89 

liyiug depends upon carrying elections at any cost for 
the party which controls it/ * 

On the whole, as far as a stranger can judge^ there seem 
to be in this field real signs of improvement, although 
they may not be very considerable or decisive. It must 
be remembered that the period immediately following 
the War was one peculiarly fitted for the growth of 
corruption. The sudden and enormous increase of 
debt, the corresponding multiplication of officials, the 
paralysis of political life in a great part of the country, 
and the many elements of social, industrial, and polit- 
ical anarchy that still prevailed, all made the task of 
professional politicians easy and lucrative. One great 
improvement which has taken place, and which has 
spread very swiftly over the United States, has been an 
alteration in the ballot system. In my own opinion, 
the ballot, in any country where politics rest on a 
really sound and independent basis, is essentially an 
evil. Power in politics should never be dissociated 
from responsibility, and the object of the ballot is to 
make the elector absolutely irresponsible. It obscures 
the moral weight of an election, by making it impossi- 
ble to estimate the real force of opinion, knowledge, 
and character that is thrown on either side. It saps 
the spirit of independence and uprightness, and it gives 
great facilities for deception and fraud, for the play of 
mercenary, sordid, and malignant motives, and for the 
great political evil of sacerdotal influence. But the 
task of a statesman is, usually, to select the best alter- 
native, and, where intimidation or corruption is very 
rife, the evils produced by secret voting may be less 
serious than those which it prevents. 

In America, the system of ballot secured no real 



Gilman's Socialism, and the American Spirit (181)3), pp. 310-11. 



90 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

secrecy, and seemed, and indeed probably was, specially 
intended to throw all electoral power into the hands of 
^the machine/ The agents of each organisation were 
suffered to stand at the poll and furnish the elector 
with ballot-papers inscribed with the names of their 
party candidates, and watchful eyes followed him till 
he placed the paper in the ballot-box. He might, it is 
true, change the name on the paper, but in the im- 
mense majority of cases the votes of the electors were 
dictated by and known to the party agent. ^ A power- 
ful movement, however, grew up, chiefly in 1890 and 
1891, for changing this system and introducing what 
is called the Australian ballot. Its principal feature is 
that the State has taken the manufacture and distribu- 
tion of ballot-papers out of the hands of the different 
parties, and secures to the voter absolute secrecy and 
freedom from interference at the polling-booths. In 
five years the Australian ballot has been adopted in 
thirty-five States, and it appears to have done some- 
thing to diminish the power of the caucus organisation 
and to check the various fraudulent practices which 
had been common at elections.^ 

One great cause of the degradation of American pol- 
itics has been the extreme facility with which votes 
have been given to ignorant immigrants, who had no 
experience in public life and no real interest in the 
well-being of the country. Most of the more intelli- 
gent American observers have agreed that the common 
schools, and the high level of knowledge and intelli- 
gence they secure, have been among the most impor- 



1 See Bryce, ii. pp. 492-95. ^^ Oilman's Socialism and the 

There were some varieties, how- American Spirit^ pp. 1G9-70 ; 

ever, in the system in the differ- Political Science QnaHerly 

ent States. (Ford, American (^New York), 1891, p. 38G. 
Citizen's Manual, i. 103-8.) 



CH. I. THE KNOW-NOTHINGS 91 

tant conditions of the healthy working of their insti- 
tutions. For a long period the constituent bodies in 
America were certainly among the best educated in the 
world ; but since the torrent of ignorant immigrants 
and negro voters has poured into them they can have 
no pretensions to this position. 

In 1798, when revolutionary elements were very 
rife in Europe, and when their introduction into the 
United States excited serious alarm, a Naturalisation 
Act was carried increasing the necessary term of resi- 
dence from five to fourteen years ; but this Act was 
only in force for four years. The Know-nothing 
party, which played a considerable part in American 
politics in 1854 and the two following years, en- 
deavoured to revive the policy of 1798. It grew up at 
the time when the evil effects of the great immigration 
that followed the Irish famine had become apparent, 
and it was assisted by a fierce anti-Popery fanaticism, 
which had been much strengthened by the hostility the 
Catholic clergy had begun to show to tlie common 
schools, and by the attempt of some of them to exclude 
Bible-reading from those schools. It was guilty of not 
a little lawless violence, and although it succeeded, in 
1855, in carrying nine of the States elections, and in 
1856 nominated presidential candidates, it soon per- 
ished, chiefly through its divisions on the slavery ques- 
tion, and through the transcendent importance that 
question was beginning to take in American politics. 
It is said that Washington, in some moment of great 
danger, gave the order, ^Put none but Americans on 
guard to-night,^ and these words were taken by the 
Know-nothings as their watchword. Their funda- 
mental object was the exclusion of foreigners and Cath- 
olics from all national. State, county, and municipal 
offices, and a change in the naturalisation hiws provid- 



92 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. t. 

ing that no immigrant should become a citizen till 
after a residence of twenty-one, or, at the very least, of 
fifteen years. ^ 

Few persons would now defend the proposal to in- 
troduce a religious disqualification into the American 
Constitution ; but if the Know-nothings had succeeded 
in lengthening the period of residence required for nat- 
uralisation, they might have given a diiferent charac- 
ter to American political life and incalculably raised 
its moral tone. Their best defence is to be found in 
the enormous scandals in the government of New York 
that immediately followed their defeat. To one class 
especially, a change in the laws of naturalisation would 
have been a priceless blessing. It is difficult to say 
how different the Irish element in America might have 
been if the poor, ignorant, helpless, famine-stricken pea- 
santry who poured by tens of thousands into New York 
had been encouraged to pass at once into honest indus- 
try, scattered on farms over the face of the country, and 
kept for fifteen or twenty years out of the corrupting 
influence of American politics. But the shrewd party 
managers soon perceived that these poor men were 
among the best counters in their game. The immedi- 
ate prospect of much higher wages than they had been 
accustomed to kept an immense proportion of them in 
the great city where they landed. They had no one to 
guide them. They were hardly more fitted than chil- 
dren to make their way under new conditions in a 
strange land, and almost their only genuine political 
feeling was hatred of England. Like the Germans, 
they showed from the first a marked tendency to con- 



1 Much information on the United States from the Com- 

Know-notliing movement will he promise of 1850, and in an arti- 

found in the second volunie of cle hy Mr. McMaster in The 

Mr. Rliodes's History of the Forum^ July 1894. 



CH. I. IRISH AND NEGRO VOTERS 93 

gregate in great towns. It was computed in 1890^ that 
a third part of the Irish in America were still to be 
found in the ten largest towns ; that, taking the popu- 
lation of those towns together, one out of every thir- 
teen persons was Irish, and that in New York, out of 
a population of a little more than 1,200,000, 198,000 
were Irish. ^ Five years were required for naturalisa- 
tion by the Federal law, but some State laws gave a 
vote after a shorter residence, and the Federal law was 
easily and constantly violated. Immense numbers, who 
were absolutely ignorant of all American public ques- 
tions, and absolutely indifferent to public interests, 
were speedily drilled in the party organisation. They 
soon learned their lesson. They acquired a rare apti- 
tude in running the machine, in turning the balance 
of doubtful elections, in voting together in disciplined 
masses, in using j^olitical power for private gain. 
There are few sadder histories than the influence of the 
Irish race on American politics, and the influence of 
American politics on the Irish race. 

The enfranchisement of the negroes added a new 
and enormous mass of voters, who were utterly and 
childishly incompetent, and it applied mainly to that 
portion of the United States which had escaped the 
contamination of the immigrant vote. For some time 
after the war the influence of property and intelligence 
in the South was completely broken, and the negro 
vote was ostensibly supreme. The consequence was 
what might have been expected. A host of vagrant 
political adventurers from the North, known in Amer- 
ica as carpet-baggers, poured into the Southern prov- 
inces, and, in conjunction with the refuse of the 
mean whites, they undertook the direction of the negro 



^ Hart's Essays on American Government^ pp. 192, 204. 



94 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

votes. Then followed^ under the protection of the 
Northern bayonets, a grotesque parody of government, 
a hideous orgie of anarchy, violence, unrestrained cor- 
ruption, undisguised, ostentatious, insulting robbery, 
such as the world had scarcely ever seen. The State 
debts were profusely piled up. Legislation was openly 
put up for sale. The ' Bosses ' were in all their glory, 
and they were abundantly rewarded, while the crushed, 
ruined, plundered whites combined in secret societies 
for their defence, and retaliated on their oppressors by 
innumerable acts of savage vengeance.^ At length the 
Northern troops were withdrawn, and the whole scene 
changed. The carpet-baggers had had their day, and 
they returned laden with Southern booty to their o^,vn 
States. Partly by violence, partly by fraud, but largely 
also through the force of old habits of obedience and 
command, the planters in a short time regained their 
ascendency. Sometimes, it is said, they did not even 
count the negro votes. Generally they succeeded in 
dictating them, and by systematic manipulation or in- 
timidation they restored the South to quiet and some 
degree of prosperity. A more curious picture of the 
effects of democratic equality among a population who 
were entirely unfitted for it had never been presented. 
The ]N"orth, it is true, introduced all the apparatus of 
State education for the benefit of the negroes ; but if 
there had ever been any desire for such things, it soon 
died away. Mr. Bryce, writing about twenty-three 
years after the termination of the Civil War, says : 



' See Brvce, ii. 520-21 ; Gold- dinary reign of terror and plun- 

win Smith, p. 300. M. Molin- der that existed in the South 

ari, in his yery interesting Let- while the carpet-baggers were 

tres sur les Etats-Unis et le in power (see pp. 185-97, 270- 

Canada^ has collected a number 72). 
of facts illustrating the extraor- 



CH. I. CORRUPTION IN NEW YORK 95 

' Konglily speaking, 75 per cent, of the adult coloured 
voters are unable to write, and most of the rest unac- 
customed to read newspapers/^ 

The system I have described has proved even more 
pernicious in municipal government than in State pol- 
itics or in Federal politics. Innumerable elections of 
obscure men to obscure places very naturally failed to 
excite general interest, and they almost inevitably fell 
into the hands of a small ring of professional politicians. 
The corruption of New York, which has been the most 
notorious, is often attributed almost exclusively to the 
Irish vote ; but as early as the first quarter of the nine- 
teenth century, when Irish influence was quite imper- 
ceptible, the State and City of New York were in the 
hands of a clique called ^the Albany Kegency,^ which 
appears to have exhibited on a small scale most of the 
features of the later rings. ^ A strong phalanx of offi- 
cers, from the governor and the senators down to 
the justices of peace in the most remote part of the 
State,' we are told, governed New York for the sole 
benefit of a small knot of corrupt politicians. ' The 
judiciaries'' were '^ shambles for the bargain and sale of 
offices.' The justices of the peace were all the creatures 
of the party, and were almost invariably corrupt.^ Be- 
tween 1842 and 1846, when the great Irish immigra- 
tion had not yet begun, an evil of another kind was 
prevailing in New York. It was the custom to allow 
the inmates of public almshouses to leave the institu- 
tions on the days of election and cast their votes ; and 
an American writer assures us that at this time ' the 
almshouses formed an important factor in the politics 



' Bryce, ii. 92-93. Works (New York, 1853), iii. 

- See an address of the well- 334-37. The first political work 

known statesman, W. H. Sew- of Mr. Seward Avas to resist the 

ard, October 5, 1824 : Seward's Albany Ring. 



96 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

of the State of 'New York, for the paupers were sent 
out to vote by the party in power, and were threatened 
with a loss of support unless they voted as directed ; 
and the number was such as to turn the scale in the 
districts in which they voted/ ^ It was abuses of this 
kind that led to one of the greatest modern improve- 
ments in American politics — the exclusion in several 
States of absolute paupers from the franchise. 

It is true, however, that the corruption never at- 
tained anything approaching the magnitude which it 
reached between 1863 and 1871, when all the powers 
of the State and town of New York had passed into 
the hands of the Tammany Ring. At this time four- 
ninths of the population were of foreign birth. A 
vast proportion consisted of recent immigrants, and 
the Irish Catholic vote seems to have '^ gone solid ^ in 
favour of the ring. The majority of the State legisla- 
ture, the mayor, the governor, several of the judges, 
almost all the municipal authorities who were empow- 
ered to order, appropriate, supervise and control expen- 
diture, were its creatures, and I suppose no other cap- 
ital city in the civilised globe has ever, in time of peace, 
witnessed such a system of wholesale, organised, con- 
tinuous plunder. It was computed that 65 per cent, of 
the sums that were ostensibly expended in public works 
represented fraudulent additions. Between 1860 and 
1871 the debt of New York quintupled, and during 
the last two and a half years of the government of the 
ring it increased at the rate of more than five and a half 
millions of pounds a year.^ A distinguished Amer- 
ican writer, who is also a distinguished diplomatist 



' Ford's American Citizen's York City in Mr. Bryce's third 

Manual^ i. 88-81). volume. See especially pp. 179, 

■^ See Mr. Goodnow's ('lia])ter 190, 195. 
on the Tweed Hint? in New 



CH. I. MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION 97 

and well acquainted with the conditions of European 
capitals, has drawn the following instructive parallel. 
' The city of Berlin, in size and rapidity of growth, 
may be compared to New York. It contains twelve 
hundred thousand inhabitants, and its population has 
tripled within the last thirty years. . . . While Ber- 
lin has a municipal life at the same time dignified 
and economical, with streets well paved and clean, with 
a most costly system of drainage, with noble public 
buildings, with life, liberty, and the pursuit of happi- 
ness better guarded by far than in our own metropolis, 
the whole government is carried on by its citizens for 
but a trifle more than the interest of the public debt of 
the city of New York.^ 

^ I wish,^ says the same writer, ^ to deliberately state 
a fact easy of verification — the fact that whereas, as a 
rule, in other civilised countries municipal Govern- 
ments have been steadily improving until they have 
been made generally honest and serviceable, our own, 
as a rule, are the worst in the world, and they are 
steadily growing worse every day.^ ' 

The case of New York was an extreme one, but was, 
indeed, very far from being unique. ' The government 
of the cities,^ says Mr. Bryce, ' is the one conspicu- 
ous failure of the United States. . . . The faults of 
the State Governments are insignificant compared with 
the extravagance, corruption, and mismanagement 
which mark the administration of most of the great 
cities. For these evils are not confined to one or two 
cities. . . . There is not a city with a population 



' The 3Iessage of the Nine- by the same writer, on ' The 

teenih Century to the Twentieth^ Government of American Cit- 

by Andrew Dickson White ies ' ( The Foriim^ December 

(Newhaven, 1883), pp. 14-15; 1890). 
see also an instructive article. 



98 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

of 200^000 where the poison-germs have not sprung 
into vigorous life^ and in some of the smaller ones, 
down to 70,000, it needs no microscope to note the re- 
sults of their growth. Even in cities of the third rank 
similar phenomena may occasionally be discerned ; 
though there, as some one has said, the jet-black of 
isew York or San Francisco dies away into a harmless 
grey/^ It should be added, that there is no country 
in the world in which this question is more important 
than in the United States, for there is no country in 
which town life during the present century has in- 
creased so enormously and so rapidly. The proportion 
of the population who live in towns of over 8,000 in- 
habitants is said to have risen in that period from 4 to 
more than 23 per cent.^ 

Mr. Bryce has enumerated from good American 
sources the chief forms which this municipal robbery 
assumes. There are sales of monopolies in the use of 
public thoroughfares ; systematic jobbing of contracts ; 
enormous abuses in patronage ; enormous overcharges 
for necessary public works. Cities have been com- 
pelled to buy lands for parks and places because the 
owners wished to sell them ; to grade, pave, and sewer 
streets without inhabitants in order to award corrupt 
contracts for the works ; to purchase worthless proper- 
ties at extravagant prices ; to abolish one office and 
create another with the same duties, or to vary the 
functions of offices for the sole purpose of redistribut- 
ing official emoluments ; to make or keep the salary of 
an office unduly high in order that its tenant may pay 
largely to the party funds ; to lengthen the term of 

> Bryce, ii. 281. and an article by Mr. Springer, 

' See an essay on American on ' City Growth and Tarty Fo\- 

cities in llavVs Essays on Amei-- itics,' The Forum, December 

ican Government^ pp. 162-205 ; 1890. 



CH. I. MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION 99 

office in order to secure the tenure of corrupt or in- 
competent men. When increasing taxation begins to 
arouse resistance, loans are launched under false pre- 
tences, and often with the assistance of falsified ac- 
counts. In all the chief towns municipal debts have 
risen to colossal dimensions and increased with porten- 
tous rapidity. ' Within the twenty years from 1860 to 
1880/ sa5^s an American writer, ' the debts of the cities 
of the Union rose from about $100,000,000 to 1682,- 
000,000. From 1860 to 1875 the increase of debt in 
eleven cities was 270.9 per cent., increase of taxation 
362.2 per cent. ; whereas the increase in taxable valu- 
ation was but 156.9 per cent., and increase in popula- 
tion but 70 per cent.-* ' The New York Commissioners 
of 1876 probably understated the case when they de- 
clared that more than half of all the present city debts 
in the United States are the direct results of inten- 
tional and corrupt misrule.^ 

No candid man can wonder at it. It is the plain, 
inevitable consequence of the application of the meth- 
ods of extreme democracy to municipal government. 
In America, as in England, municipal elections fail to 
attract the same interest and attention as great politi- 
cal ones, and when all the smaller offices are filled by 
popular election, and when those elections are continu- 
ally recurring, it is impossible for busy men to master 
their details or form any judgment on the many ob- 
scure candidates who appear before them. Property 
qualifications are deemed too aristocratic for a demo- 
cratic people. The good old clause, that might once 
have been found in many charters, providing that no 
one should vote upon any proposition to raise a tax or 



' Sterne's United States, p. 2 Bryce, ii. 278-87, 469-74 

267; see also Bryce, ii. 280. 521. 



100 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

to ap2)ropriate its proceeds unless he was himself liable 
to be assessed for such tax^ has disappeared. ^ It is 
deemed undemocratic ; practical men say there is no 
use in submitting it to a popular vote/ ^ The elections 
are by manhood suffrage. Only a small proportion of 
the electors have any ap23reciable interest in moderate 
taxation and economical administration, and a propor- 
tion of votes, which is usually quite sufficient to hold 
the balance of power, is in the hands of recent and most 
ignorant immigrants. Is it possible to conceive con- 
ditions more fitted to subserve the purposes of cunning 
and dishonest men, whose object is personal gain, 
whose method is the organisation of the vicious and 
ignorant elements of the community into combinations 
that can turn elections, levy taxes, and appoint admin- 
istrators ? 

The rings are so skilfully constructed that they can 
nearly always exclude from office a citizen who is 
known to be hostile ; though ' a good, easy man, who 
will not fight, and will make a reputable figure-head, 
may be an excellent investment."^ Sometimes, no 
doubt, the bosses quarrel among themselves, and the 
cause of honest government may gain something by the 
dispute. But in general, as long as government is not 
absolutely intolerable, the more industrious and respect- 
able classes keep aloof from the nauseous atmosphere 
of municipal politics, and decline the long, difficult, 
doubtful task of entering into conflict with the dom- 
inant rings. ' The affairs of the city," says Mr. White, 
^are virtually handed over to a few men who make 
politics, so called, a business. The very germ of the 
difficulty was touched once, in my presence, by a lead- 
ing man of business in our great metropolis, who said : 



Bryce, ii. 2D1. ' Il)i(l. ii. 4G'J. 



CH. I. MUNICIPAL CORRUPTION 101 

" We have thought this thing over, and we find that it 
pays better to neglect our city affairs than to attend to 
them ; that we can make more money in the time re- 
quired for the full discharge of our political duties than 
the politicians can steal from us on account of our not 
discharging them/^ ' ^ 

The evil has, however, undoubtedly, in many cases 
become intolerable, and the carnival of plunder that 
culminated in New York in 1871 gave a shock to pub- 
lic opinion and began a series of amendments Avhich 
appear to have produced some real improvement. ' The 
problem,^ says Mr. Sterne, ' is becoming a very serious 
one how, with the growth of a pauper element, prop- 
erty rights in cities can be protected from confiscation 
at the hands of the non-producing classes. That the 
suffrage is a spear as well as a shield is a fact which 
many writers on suffrage leave out of sight ; that it 
not only protects the holder of the vote from aggression, 
but also enables him to aggress upon the rights of 
others by means of the taxing power, is a fact to which 
more and more weight must be given as population in- 
creases and the suffrage is extended.^ ^ Some good has 
been done by more severe laws against corruption at 
elections; though, in spite of these laws, the perjury 
and personation and wholesale corruption of a New 
York election appear far to exceed anything that can 
be found in the most corrupt capital in Europe.^ A 
great reform, however, has been made by the extension 
of the term of office of the New York judges in the 
higher courts to fourteen years, and by a measure 



' White's Message of the Nine- way in which New York elec- 

teenth Century to the Twentieth^ tions are still conducted, by Mr. 

pp. 15-16. Goff, in the North American 

■] Sterne, p. 271. Review, 1894, pp. 208-10. 

"* See a striking account of the 



102 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

granting them independent salaries. The general im- 
punity of the great organisers of corruption was broken 
in 1894, when one of the chief bosses in America, a man 
of vast wealth and enormous influence in American 
politics, was at last brought to justice and sentenced to 
six years^ imprisonment.^ 

The most successful steps, however, taken in the 
direction of reform have been those limiting the power 
of corrupt bodies. One of the most valuable and most 
distinctive features of the American Constitution is the 
power of electing conventions independent of the State 
legislatures for the purpose of effecting amendments in 
the State constitutions. Being specially elected for a 
single definite purpose, and for a very short time, and 
having none of the patronage and administrative pow- 
ers that are vested in the Legislature, these conven- 
tions, though the creatures of universal suffrage, have 
in a great degree escaped the influence of the machine, 
and represent the normal and genuine wishes of the 
community. They have no power of enacting amend- 
ments, but they have the power of proposing them and 
submitting them to a direct popular vote. By these 
means a number of amendments have, during the last 
few years, been introduced into the State constitutions. 
In New York, and in several other States, since 1874 
the State legislatures are only permitted to legislate for 
municipal affairs by a general law, and are deprived of 
the much-abased right of making special laws in fa- 
vour of particular individuals or corporations ; but it 
is said that these restrictions are easily and constantly 
evaded.^ Restrictions have been imposed in many 



^ A curious letter on the ca- be found in The Times^ March 

reer of this personage, called 2, 1894. 
' The Downfall of a Political « Sterne, pp. 258-59. 

Boss in the United States,' will 



CH. I. RESTRICTIONS ON STATE LEGISLATURES 103 

States upon forms of corruption that had been widely 
practised, in the guise of distributions of public funds 
in aid of charities connected with religious establish- 
ments, and of exemptions from taxation granted to 
charitable institutions. In a few States some provision 
has been made to secure a representation of minorities/ 
and in many States limitations — which, however, have 
been often successfully evaded — have been imposed on 
the power of borrowing and the power of taxing.^ The 
theory of American statesmen seems to be, that the 
persons elected on a democratic system are always likely 
to prove dishonest, but that it is possible by constitu- 
tional laws to restrict their dishonesty to safe limits. 
There has been a strong tendency of late years to mul- 
tiply and elaborate in minute detail constitutional re- 
strictions, and the policy has also been widely adopted 
of making the sessions of State legislatures biennial in- 
stead of annual, in order to limit their powers of mis- 
chief. 

The following interesting passage from one of the 
chief living historians of America well represents the 
new spirit. ' It has become the fashion to set limits on 
the power of the governors, of the legislatures, of the 
courts ; to command them to do this, to forbid them 
to do that, till a modern State constitution is more 
like a code of laws than an instrument of representative 
government. A distrust of the servants and represen- 
tatives of the people is everywhere manifest. A long 
and bitter experience has convinced the people that 



^ Ford, i. 113-15. never exceed 7 per cent, of the 
2 See, on this subject, Bryce, assessed vahie of the taxable 
ii. 293-94. One favourite form property. In order to evade 
of restriction has been that the this the assessed value of prop- 
debt of a county, city, borough, erty has almost everywhere been 
township, or school district shall largely increased. 



104 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

legislators will roll up the State debt unless positively 
forbidden to go beyond a certain figure ; that they will 
suffer railroads to parallel each other, corporations to 
consolidate, common carriers to discriminate;, city 
councils to sell valuable franchises to street-car com- 
panies and telephone companies, unless the State con- 
stitution expressly declares that such things shall not 
be. So far has this system of prohibition been carried, 
that many legislatures are not allowed to enact any 
private or special legislation ; are not allowed to re- 
lieve individuals or corporations from obligations to the 
State ; are not allowed to pass a Bill in which any 
member is interested, or to loan the credit of the 
State, or to consider money Bills in the last hours of 
the session/ ^ In Washington, a still stronger meas- 
ure has been adopted, and the whole municipal govern- 
ment is placed in the hands of a commission appointed 
directly by the Congress. 

At the same time, another very different, and per- 
haps more efficacious, method has been adopted of 
checking municipal corruption, and Laveleyehas justly 
regarded it as extremely significant of the future ten- 
dencies of democracy. There are two facts, as yet 
very imperfectly recognised in Europe, which Amer- 
ican experience has amply established. The first is 
that, in the words of an American writer, ^ there can 
be no question that one of the most prolific sources of 
official corruption and incompetency lies in the multi- 
plication of elective offices.^ ^ The second is, that this 
multiplication, instead of strengthening, materially di- 
minishes popular control, for it confuses issues, divides 
and obscures responsibility, weakens the moral effect of 



' See un article, by Mr. Mc- cember 1898, p. 470. 
Master, in The Forum., De- ^ Yor(\^ i. 129. 



CH. I. TENDENCY TO CONCENTRATE POWER 105 

each election, bewilders the ordinary elector^ who knows 
little or nothing of the merits of the different candi- 
dateS;, and inevitably ends by throwing the chief power 
into the hands of a small knot of wirepullers. The sys- 
tem has, accordingly, grown up in America of invest- 
ing the mayors of the towns with an almost autocratic 
authority, and making them responsible for the good 
government of the city. These mayors are themselves 
elected by popular suffrage for periods ranging from 
one to five years ; they are liable to impeachment if 
they abuse their functions ; the State legislature re- 
tains the right of giving or withholding supplies, and 
it can override, though only by a two-thirds majority, 
the veto of the mayor. But, in spite of these restric- 
tions, the power vested in this functionary, according 
to recent constitutional amendments, is enormously 
great, far greater than in European cities. With very 
slight restrictions, the mayor appoints and can remove 
all the heads of all the city departments. He exercises a 
right of veto and supervision over all their proceedings. 
He is responsible for the working of every part of mu- 
nicipal administration. He keeps the peace, calls out 
the Militia, enforces the law, and, in a word, deter- 
mines in all its main lines the character of the city 
government. This system began in Brooklyn in 1882. 
It was extended, apparently with excellent results, to 
New York in 1884 ; and the same highly concentrated 
responsibility is spreading rapidly through other 
States.^ It is curious to observe the strength which 
this tendency is assuming in a country which beyond 
all others was identified with the opposite system ; and 
it is regarded by some excellent political writers in 



' Bryce, ii. 264-65, 292, 304-5, iii. 196 ; Laveleye, Le Gouverne- 
ment dans la Democratie^ i. 97-109. 



106 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

America as the oue real corrective of tlie vices of de- 
mocracy. In the words of one of the most recent of 
these writers^ ' the tendency is visibly strengthening in 
the United States to concentrate administrative powers 
in the hands of one man, and to hold him responsible 
for its wise and honest use. Diffusion of responsibil- 
ity through a crowd of legislators has proved to be a 
deceptive method of securing the public welfare.^ ^ 

It seems to me probable that this system will ulti- 
mately, and after many costly and disastrous experi- 
ments, spread widely wherever unqualified democracy 
prevails. In the election of a very conspicuous person, 
who is invested with very great prerogatives, public 
interest is fully aroused, and a wave of opinion arises 
which in some degree overflows the lines of strict cau- 
cus politics. The increasing power of organisations is 
a conspicuous fact in all countries that are gliding down 
the democratic slope. It is abundantly seen in England, 
where candidates for Parliament are now more and more 
exclusively nominated by party organisations ; and in 
the United States the power of such bodies is far 
greater than in England. But while in obscure and 
comparatively insignificant appointments the managers 
of the machine can usually do much what they please, 
they are obliged in the more important elections to 
take average non-political opinion into account. The 
best candidates are not found to be men of great emi- 
nence or ability, for these always excite animosities and 
divisions ; but it is equally important that they should 
not be men labouring under gross moral imputations. 
The system of double election also, though it has been 
greatly weakened, probably still exercises some influence 
in diminishing corruption. It is like the process of 



Gil man, Socialism and the American Spirit, p. 82. 



CH. I. CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS 107 

successive inoculations, by wliicli physiologists are 
able to attenuate the virus of a disease. On the whole, 
corruption in the United States is certainly less promi- 
nent in the higher than in the lower spheres of govern- 
ment, though even in the former it appears to me to be 
far greater than in most European countries — certainly 
far greater than in G-reat Britain. 

I can, however, hardly do better than give a sum- 
mary of the conclusions of Mr. Bryce. They appear 
to me the more impressive because, in the somewhat 
curious chapter which he has devoted to American cor- 
ruption, it is his evident desire to minimise, as far as 
he honestly can, both its gravity and its significance. 
No President, he says, has ever been seriously charged 
with pecuniary corruption, and there is no known in- 
stance, since the presidency which immediately j)re- 
ceded the Civil War, of a Cabinet minister receiving a 
direct money bribe as the price of an executive act or 
an appointment ; but several leading ministers of re- 
cent Administrations have been suspected of compli- 
city in railroad jobs, and even in frauds upon the rev- 
enue. In the Legislature, both the senators and the 
members of the House of Representatives labour under 
^ abundant suspicions,^ ^ abundant accusations,^ but 
few of these ^ have been, or could have been, sifted to 
the bottom.^ ' The opportunities for private gain are 
large, the chances of detection small.'' All that can be 
safely said is, that personal dishonesty in the exercise 
of legislative powers, of a kind quite distinct from the 
political profligacy with which we are in our own coun- 
try abundantly familiar, prevails largely and unques- 
tionably in America. It is especially prominent in what 
we should call private Bills affecting the interests of 
railroads or of other wealthy corporations, and in Bills 
altering the tariff of imports, on which a vast range of 



108 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

maimfacturing interests largely depend. "' The doors 
of Congress are besieged by a whole army of commercial 
and railroad men and their agents, to whom, since they 
have come to form a sort of profession, the name of 
Lobbyists is given. Many Congressmen are personally 
interested, and lobby for themselves among their col- 
leagues from the vantage-ground of their official posi- 
tions." 

The object of the lobbyist is to ' offer considerations 
for help in passing a Bill which is desired, or stopping 
a Bill which is feared." There are several different 
methods. There is ' log-rolling," when members in- 
terested in different private Bills come to an agree- 
ment that each will support the Bill of the others on 
condition of himself receiving the same assistance. 
There is the ^strike," which means that *^a member 
brings in a Bill directed against some railroad or other 
great corporation merely in order to levy blackmail 
upon it. . . . An eminent railroad president told me 
that for some years a certain senator regularly prac- 
tised this trick." *^It is universally admitted that the 
Capitol and the hotels of Washington are a nest of 
such intrigues and machinations while Congress is sit- 
ting." The principal method, however, of succeeding 
seems to be simple bribery, though 'no one can tell 
how many of the members are tainted." Sometimes 
the money does not go to the member of Congress, but to 
the boss who controls him. Sometimes a lobbyist re- 
ceives money to bribe an honest member, but, finding 
he is going to vote in the way desired, keeps it in his 
own pocket. Often members are bribed to support a 
railway by a transfer of portions of its stocks. Free 
passes were so largely given with the same object to 
legislators that an Act was passed in 1887 to forbid 
them. Mr. Br3^ce mentions a governor who used to 



CH. I. CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS 109 

obtain loans of money from the railway wliich traversed 
his territory under the promise that he would use his 
constitutional powers in its favour ; and members of 
Congress were accustomed to buy, or try to buy, land 
belonging to a railway company at less than the market 
price, in consideration of the services they could ren- 
der to the line in the House. It was clearly shown 
that, in one case within the last twenty years, a large 
portion of a sum of 14,818,000, which was expended 
by a single railway, was used for the purpose ' of in- 
fluencing legislation/ The letters of the director who 
managed the case of this railway have been published, 
and show that he found members of both Houses fully 
amenable to corruption. ' I think, ^ writes this gentle- 
man in 1878, ' in all the world^s history, never before 
was such a wild set of demagogues honoured by the 
name of Congress.^ 

It is, of course, inevitable that only a small propor- 
tion of transactions of this kind should be disclosed. 
These cases are merely samples, probably representing 
many others. A great additional amount of direct cor- 
ruption is connected with the enormous distribution of 
patronage in the hands of members of Congress. There 
are about 120,000 Federal Civil Service places, and an 
important part of each member's business is to distrib- 
ute such places among his constituents. It is easy to 
imagine how such patronage would be administered by 
such men as have been described. 

Mr. Bryce, however, is of opinion that there is 
much prevalent exaggeration about American corrup- 
tion, and that Europeans are very unduly shocked by 
it. This is partly the fault of Americans, who have 
^ an airy way of talking about their own country,' and 
love 'broad effects.' It is partly, also, due to the 
malevolence of European travellers, ' who, generally 



110 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

belonging to the wealthier class, are generally reaction- 
ary in politics/* and therefore not fayourable to demo- 
cratic government. Englishmen, he thinks, are yer}" 
unphilosophical. They haye ' a useful knack of forget- 
ting their own shortcomings when contemj)lating those 
of their neighbours.' 'Derelictions of duty which a 
man thinks trivial in the form with which custom 
has made him familiar in his own country, where, 
perhaps, they are matter for merriment, shock him 
when they appear in a different form in another coun- 
try. They get mixed up in his mind with yenality, 
and are cited to prove that the country is corrupt and 
its politicians profligate.'' In the proceedings of Con- 
gress, Mr. Bryce says, 'it does not seem, from what 
one hears on the spot, that money is often given, or, I 
should rather say, it seems that the men to whom it is 
given are few in number. But considerations of some 
kind pretty often pass.^ In other words, not actual 
money, but the yalue of money, and jobs by which 
money can be got, are usually employed. 

Senators are often charged with ' buying themselves 
into the Senate.^ but Mr. Bryce does not think 
that they often give direct bribes to the members 
of the State legislature to yote for them. They only 
make large contributions to the party election fund, 
out of which the election expenses of the majority 
are defrayed.^ 'Bribery exists in Congress, but is 



' T may liore quote the words speeches of Webster, and Cal- 

of ]\Ir. "White, whose authority houn, and Clay, and Sumner, 

on such a question is at least and Seward, and Everett, that 

equal to tliat of Mr. Bryce : — great commonwealths would 

' I am not at all disposed to ac- arise in wliich United States' 

cept the prevalent cant about senatorships would be virtually 

corruption : but suppose that put up to the highest bidder 

any one liad told us in our col- term after term, until such a 

lege days, as we pondered the mode of securing a position in 



CH. I. CORRUPTION IN CONGRESS 111 

confined to a few members^ say 5 per cent, of the whole 
number. . . . The taking of other considerations 
than money^ such as a share in a lucrative contract, or 
a railway pass, or a " good thing " to be secured for a 
friend, prevails among legislators to a somewhat larger 
extent. . . . One may roughly conjecture that from 
15 to 20 per cent, of the members of Congress, or of 
an average State legislature, would allow themselves to 
be influenced by inducements of this kind. . . . Job- 
bery of various kinds, i.e. the misuse of a public posi- 
tion for the benefit of individuals, is pretty frequent. 
It is often disguised as a desire to render some service 
to the party ; and the same excuse is sometimes found 
for a misappropriation of public money. Patronage 
is usually dispensed with a view to party considera- 
tions or to win personal support. But this remark is 
equally true of England and France, the chief differ- 
ence being that, owing to the short terms and frequent 
removals, the quantity of patronage is relatively greater 
in the United States.^ 

On the whole, Mr. Bryce concludes, if ' we leave 
ideals out of sight, and try America by an actual 
standard, we shall find that while the legislative bodies 
fall below the level of purity maintained in England 
and German}^, probably also in France and Italy, her 
Federal and State Administration, in spite of the evils 
flowing from an uncertain tenure, is not, in point of 
integrity, at this moment sensibly inferior to the Ad- 
ministrations of European countries."^ 

This judgment certainly does not err on the side of 
severity. If in England a great admirer of our parlia- 
mentary institutions, while boasting that no Prime 



our highest council would be teentli Century to tlie Ticeniietli^ 

looked upon as natural and p. 14). 

normal I ' (^Message of the Nine- ' Bryce, ii. 509-25. 



112 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

Minister had been seriously charged with pecuniary 
corruption^ and that no Cabinet Minister had been 
known for the last forty years to have taken money as 
a bribe, was obliged to add that several Cabinet Minis- 
ters of both parties in the State were suspected of 
complicity in railroad jobs and frauds on the revenue ; 
that the whole of that vast department of legislation 
which affects the interests of corporations and manu- 
factures was systematically managed, or at least influ- 
enced, by corruption ; that about 5 per cent, of the 
members of both Houses of Parliament were accus- 
tomed to take direct money bribes ; that one in every 
five or six members was pretty certainly open to cor- 
rupt jobs, while suspicion of dishonesty of some kind 
attached to a much larger number, we should scarcely, 
I think, consider our parliamentary government a suc- 
cess. 

Many of the causes of the vices of American govern- 
ment are inherent in democracy, but there are two ag- 
gravating causes which I have not mentioned. The 
rule that the person elected to either House of Con- 
gress must be a resident in the State for which he sits 
abridges greatly the choice of able and efficient men, 
and much strengthens the power of the local machine ; 
while the large salaries attached to the position of 
senator or representative make it — even apart from its 
many indirect advantages — an object of keen ambition 
to the professional politician. Members of each House 
have a salary of 1,000/. a year, besides some small al- 
lowance for travelling and otlier expenses. In 1873, 
the two Houses passed an Act increasing many official 
salaries and adding a third to their own salaries, and, 
by a curiously characteristic provision, the congres- 
sional salaries, and these alone, were made retroactive. 
The appropriation, however, by Congress of nearly 



CH. I. PUBLIC OPINION ON CORRUPTION 113 

40,000/. to itself excited so much indignation that it 
was repealed in the next Congress.^ 

The members of the House of Eepresentatives sit 
only for two years, which probably adds something to 
the desire for speedy gain. At the same time, it ap- 
pears certain that the Federal Government is less deep- 
ly tainted with corruption than a large proportion of 
the State legislatures, far less deeply than the Govern- 
ments of nearly all the more important towns. 

There is one thing which is worse than corruption. 
It is acquiescence in corruption. N^o feature of Amer- 
ican life strikes a stranger so powerfully as the extraor- 
dinary indifference, partly cynicism and partly good 
nature, with which notorious frauds and notorious cor- 
ruption in the sphere of politics are viewed by Amer- 
ican public opinion. There is nothing, I think, alto- 
gether like this to be found in any other great country. 
It is something wholly different from the political tor- 
por which is common in half -developed nations and 
corrupt despotisms, and it is curiously unlike the state 
of feeling which exists in the French Eepublic. Fla- 
grant instances of corruption have been disclosed in 
France since 1870, but French public opinion never 
fails promptly to resent and to punish them. In Amer- 
ica, notorious profligacy in public life and in the admin- 
istration of public funds seems to excite little more 
than a disdainful smile. It is treated as very natural 
— as the normal result of the existing form of govern- 
ment. 

I imagine that most persons who formed their opin- 
ions, as historians are apt to do, mainly by the exam- 
ples of the past would judge very unfavourably the 
prospects of a country where there was so much cor- 



Bryce, i. 259-Gl. 



114 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ruption and so much toleration of corruption in public 
life. The words of Jugurtha might well rise to their 
lips : ''Urbem venalem^ et mature perituram si empto- 
rem invenerit ! ' They would be inclined to conclude 
that, if the United States escaped great perils from with- 
out, this was mainly due to its extraordinarily advan- 
tageous position, and that internally it presented in a 
very marked degree the signs of moral dissolution which 
portend the decadence of nations. I believe, however, 
that the best judges, who are well acquainted with 
America, would concur in believing that such a judg- 
ment would be fallacious. America illustrates even 
more clearly than France the truth which I have al- 
ready laid down, and which will again and again reap- 
pear in these volumes — that pure democracy is one of 
the least representative of governments. In hardly 
any other country does the best life and energy of the 
nation flow so habitually apart from politics. Hardly 
any other nation would be more grossly misjudged if 
it were mainly judged by its politicians and its politi- 
cal life.^ It seems a strange paradox that a nation 



^ The following remarks of to watch the people who make 

Mr. Oilman appear to me well a profession of running the po- 

worthy of attention : — ' Only litical machine. His own pri- 

one who has lived for some rate business, with which Oov- 

time in the United States, and ernment as a rule has little to 

has had considerable experience do, tends to absorb his thoughts, 

of the actual workings of Amer- He even prefers too often to be 

ican political institutions, will heavily taxed in direct conse- 

sufficiently realise the force of quence of political corruption, 

the curious contrast between rather than to take the time 

" the people " and " the poll- from his private affairs whi-ch 

ticians." It is purely in iniag- would be needed to overthrow 

ination or theory that tlie pol- the machine and keep it in per- 

iticians are faithful representa- manent exile' {The American 

tives of the people. Tlie busy. Spirit of Socio h'sm^ pp. 178-79). 

"driving" American citizen is I may add the judgment of one 

apt to feel tliat he has no time of the most serious and impar- 



CH. I. CAUSES OF AMERICAN CORRUPTION 115 

which stands in the very foremost rank in almost all 
the elements of a great industrial civilisation^ which 
teems witli energy^ intelligence and resource^ and which 
exhibits in many most important fields a level of moral 
excellence that very few European countries have at- 
tained, should permit itself to be governed, and repre- 
sented among the nations, in the manner I have de- 
scribed. How strange it is^ as an Italian statesman 
once said, that a century which has produced the tele- 
graph and the telephone, and has shown in ten thou- 
sand forms such amazing powers of adaptation and 
invention, should have discovered no more successful 
methods of governing mankind ! The fact, however, 
is as I have presented it, and there are few more curi- 
ous inquiries than its causes. 

The foregoing pages will, I think, have at least 
shown the chief sources from which the corruption has 
sprung. To quote once more the words of Mr. Bryce : 
^ Every feature of the machine is the result of patent 
causes. The elective offices are so numerous that or- 
dinary citizens cannot watch them, and cease to care 
who gets them ; the conventions come so often that 
busy men cannot serve in them ; the minor offices are 
so unattractive that able men do not stand for them. 
The primary lists are so contrived that only a fraction 
of the party get on them, and of this fraction many are 
too lazy, or too busy, or too careless to attend. The 
mass of the voters are ignorant ; knowing nothing 
about the personal merits of the candidates, they are 



tial of American historians : — States. The one is lower than 

' It is certain that in no Ten- it was in 1860 ; the other, incou- 

tonic nation of our day is the sistent as it may seem, is hij^her ' 

difference so marked between (Uhodos's Hist 07'y of the United 

the public and private standards States from the CoTnpromise of 

of morality as in the United 1850, iii. 113). 



116 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ready to follow their leaders like sheep. Even the bet- 
ter class, however they may grumble, are swayed by 
the inveterate habit of party loyalty, and prefer a bad 
candidate of their own party to a (probably no better) 
candidate of the other party. It is less trouble to put 
up with impure officials, costly city governments, a 
jobbing State legislature, an inferior sort of Congress- 
man, than to sacrifice one's own business in the effort 
to set things right. Thus the machine works on, and 
grinds out places, power, and the opportunities of il- 
licit gain to those who manage it.' ^ 

These things, however, would not be acquiesced in 
if it were not that an admirable written Constitution, 
enforced by a powerful and vigilant Supreme Court, 
had restricted to small limits the possibilities of mis- 
government. All the rights that men value the most 
are placed beyond the reach of a tyrannical majority. 
Congress is debarred by the Constitution from mak- 
ing any law prohibiting the free exercise of religion, 
or abridging the freedom of speech and of the press, 
or the right of assembly, or the right of petition. 'No 
person can be deprived of life, liberty, or property 
without due process of law. All the main articles 
of what British statesmen would regard as necessary 
liberties are guaranteed, and property is so fenced 
round by constitutional provisions that confiscatory 
legislation becomes almost impossible. No private 
property can be taken for public use without just com- 
pensation, and the Federal Constitution contains an 
invaluable provision forbidding any State to pass any 
law impairing tlie obligation of contracts. The dan- 
ger of partial or liiglily graduated taxation voted by 
the many and falling on the few has been, in a great 



Bryce, ii. 449. 



CH. I. RESTRICTIONS ON CORRUPTION 117 

measure^ guarded against by the clauses in the Consti- 
tution providing that representatives and direct taxes 
shall be apportioned among the States according to 
their population ; that no capitation or other direct 
tax shall be laid unless in proportion to the census^ and 
that all duties, imposts, and excises shall be uniform 
throughout the United States. The judgment of the 
Supreme Court condemning the income-tax in 1891 
brought into clear relief the full force and meaning of 
these provisions. jS^either Congress nor the State leg- 
islatures can pass any Bill of attainder or any ex j)Ost 
facto law punishing acts which were not punishable 
when they were committed. 

At the same time, the number and magnitude of the 
majorities that are required to effect any organic change 
in the Federal Constitution are so great that such 
changes become almost impossible. They have^ in 
fact, never, since the earliest days of the Constitution, 
been effected on any important subject, except during 
the Avholly abnormal period that immediately followed 
the Civil War, when the political independence of the 
Southern States was for a time destroyed. The con- 
currence of majorities in two-thirds, and afterwards in 
three-fourths, of the States which is required for such 
an organic change becomes more and more difficult to 
obtain as the States multiply, with increasing popula- 
tion. Other guarantees of good government — very 
notably, it is to be feared, the character of the Senate 
— ^have been enfeebled by time and corruption and the 
increasing power of the machine : but this one, at 
least, almost automatically strengthens. 

In the State constitutions the same system of checks 
prevails. All men, in the language of several of the 
constitutions, have ^natural, essential, inalienable 
rights,' and among them that of ' enjoying and defend- 



118 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

ing their lives and liberties, and acquiring, possessing 
and protecting proj^erty/ The Constitution of Ala- 
bama expresses admirably the best spirit of i^.merican 
statesmanship when it states that ' the sole and only 
legitimate end of government is to protect the citizen 
in the enjoyment of life, liberty and property, and 
when the Government assumes other functions, it is 
usurpation and oppression/ Politicians may job and 
cheat and maladminister, but they can only do so 
within narrow limits, and if the evils become too great, 
conventions are called, which impose restrictions on 
the State legislatures. These bodies are forbidden to 
borrow or to tax beyond certain limits, or to touch a 
long list of specified subjects, or to sit for m.ore than 
once in two years or for more than a defined number 
of days/ If they contrive — as they undoubtedly do — 
to heap up a great deal of corrupt expenditure within 
these limits, the more respectable class consider that 
the country is very rich, and can afford it, and that it 
is better to allow this corruption to go on than to give 
up private business to prevent it. A curious kind of 
optimism also prevails largely in America. It is be- 
lieved that, provided the most important things are 
secured, it is better to allow every one to vote and or- 
ganise as he pleases ; that there will ultimately be a 
survival of the fittest ; that in course of time, and after 
prolonged and costly experiences, the turbid element 
of corruption will clarify, and its Avorst constituents 
sink like sediment to the bottom. 

Another consideration, which has hardly, I think, 
l)een sufficiently recognised among the guiding influ- 
ences of American politics, is the complete separation 

' See, e.g.^ tlie long and curious list of the limitations imposed 
on the Pennsylvanian Legislature in Ford (i. 32-35). 



CH. I. THE WAR OF SECESSION 119 

of Church and State. American writers, probably with 
good reason, consider this one of the great successes of 
their government. In spite of the Episcopal Church 
establishment that once existed in Virginia, and the 
intensely theocratic character which New England 
Governments for a long time presented, the idea of the 
connection of Church and State did not strike root in 
America, and public opinion, within as well as without 
the Churches, seems cordially to approve of the separa- 
tion. But one consequence has been to diminish great- 
ly the interest in national politics. Every one who 
knows England knows how large a proportion of the 
best men who are interested in politics are mainly in- 
terested in their ecclesiastical aspects, in questions di- 
rectly or indirectly connected with Establishment or 
Disestablishment. All this class of questions is in 
America removed from the sphere of politics. 

That public opinion can be powerfully aroused there 
in a worthy cause no one will question. Nowhere in 
the present century has it acquired a greater volume 
and momentum than in the War of Secession. The 
self-sacrifice, the unanimity, the tenacity of purpose, 
the indomitable courage displayed on each side by the 
vast citizen armies in that long and terrible struggle, 
form one of the most splendid pages in nineteenth- 
century history. I can well recollect how Laurence 
Oliphant, who had excellent means of judging both 
wars, was accustomed to say that no fighting in the 
Franco-German War was comparable to the tenacity 
with which in America every village, almost every 
house, was defended or assailed ; and the appalling 
sacrifice of life during the struggle goes far to justify 
this judgment. Nor were the nobler qualities of the 
American people less clearly manifested by the sequel 
of the war. The manner in which those gigantic 



120 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

armies melted away into the civil population, casting 
aside, without apparent effort, all military tastes and 
habits, and throwing themselves into the vast fields of 
industry that were ojoened by the peace, forms one of 
the most striking spectacles in history ; and the noble 
humanity shoAvn to the vanquished enemy is a not less 
decisive proof of the high moral level of American 
opinion. It was especially admirable in the very try- 
ing moments that followed the jissassination of Lin- 
coln, and it forms a memorable contrast to the extreme 
vindictiveness displayed by their forefathers, in the 
days of the Eevolution, towards their lo3^alist fellow- 
countrymen. America rose at this time to a new place 
and dignity in the concert of nations. Europe had 
long seen in her little more than an amorphous, ill- 
cemented industrial population. It now learned to 
recognise the true characteristics of a great nation. 
There was exaggeration, but there was also no little 
truth, in the words of Lowell : 

Earth's biggest country got her soul, 
And risen up Earth's greatest nation. 

Jobbing and corruption and fraud flourished, indeed, 
abundantly during the war, but the lines of national 
greatness and genuine patriotism were far more con- 
spicuous. In times of peace, no nation has ever been 
more distinguished than America for the generosity 
shown by her citizens in supporting public institutions 
and public causes. 

Her treatment of her gigantic debt was also a great 
surprise to Europe. It was a common prediction 
among shrewd judges that the peace would speedily be 
followed by national bankruptcy, and that a democratic 
nation would never endure the burden of a national 
debt wdiich was at that time by far the largest in the 



cii. I. PAYMENT OF THE NATIONAL DEBT 121 

world. Hardly any one appears to have foreseen tliat 
this democracy would surpass all the monarcliies in 
history in its unparalleled persevering and successful 
efforts to pay off its debt. It is true that its motives 
in doing so were far from being purely patriotic and 
disinterested. The payment of the debt was indis- 
solubly connected with the adoption of a system of se- 
vere Protection. Manufacturers by such Protection 
made colossal fortunes. The working class in Ame- 
rica seem to have very generally adopted the opinion 
that a protective system, by raising the price of the 
articles they make and excluding similar articles made 
in other countries, has an effect, in raising wages and 
increasing employment, which is very beneficial to their 
interests. Multitudes of Americans in the Korthern 
States had purchased national bonds at a time when 
they were greatly depreciated, and they gained enor- 
mously by being paid off at par. At the time when 
the policy of paying off the debt was adopted, the section 
of the country where these bonds were exclusively held, 
where Protection was always most popular, and where 
manufacturers chiefly existed, had acquired, through 
the war, a complete ascendency. These things do much 
to explain the course that was adopted, but it was a 
course which involved sacrifices that few nations could 
have endured, and it was carried out with an energy 
and perseverance that no nation could have surpassed. 

The general legislation in America also ranks very 
high. Many of the worst abuses of British law either 
never existed there, or were redressed at a much earlier 
period than in England. Her penal code, her educa- 
tional laws, her laws about the sale and transfer of 
landed property, were for a long period far better than 
those of Great Britain ; and the f.ict that no religious 
disqualifications were recognised saved her from strug- 



122 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

gles that have largely occupied many generations of 
English reformers. I do not think that, in modern 
times, legislation has been better or the spirit of Ee- 
form more active in the republic than in the monarchy, 
but I believe the best observers on both sides of the 
Atlantic recognise the two systems as substantially on 
the same jA&ne of excellence, though each country may 
learn many things from the other. The American 
type of legislator is eminently shrewd, businesslike, 
and free from prejudice, and he is quite prepared to 
make good laws, as long as they do not affect inju- 
riously his personal and party interests. Public opinion 
insists on this, and it makes, as we have seen, occa- 
sional spasmodic eiforts to diminish the great corrup- 
tion of American political life. 

America, during tlie last three quarters of the nine- 
teenth ceiittiry, has changed greatly. It is very differ- 
ent from the country which Dickens and Mrs. Trollope 
described, and even the great work of Tocqueville oc- 
casionally wears an aspect of some unreality. The 
population of the United States has quadrupled since 
Tocqueville visited it, and it is not surprising that many 
conditions shottld have been changed and some predic- 
tions falsified. Tocqueville believed much more in the 
permanence of republican institutions in America than 
in the permanence of the Union. He predicted very 
confidently that the power of the Federal Government 
would steadily decline and the power of the sej^arate 
States increase ; that any serious resistance of the 
States to the Federal Union must certainly succeed ; 
that the Union would only endure as long as all the 
States continued to wish to form part of it.^ The War 



' Democratie en Amerique^ ii. war, or a grreat internal crisis, 
351-55, 383-85. He suggests, might possibly arrest this ten- 
however, in one place that a dency (p. 398). 



CH. I. TOCQUEVILLE 123 

of the Secession showed that he was mistaken, and it 
produced for some years a strong tendency in the di- 
rection of centralisation. 

In many resjDects, however, he judged with singuhir 
accuracy both the dangers and the tendencies of Ame- 
rican political life. He deplored the custom, which had 
already begun in his time, of making the judges electiye. 
He predicted that the habit of treating representatives 
as mere delegates bound by imperative instructions 
would destroy the essence of representative government. 
He dwelt with much perspicuity on the dangers in a 
pure democracy of the multiplication of great towns ; 
on the gradual displacement of power which would fol- 
low the rise of new territories eclipsing or superseding 
the old States ; on the moral and political effects of 
slavery, and of the increase of the negro race ; on the 
deep and menacing line of division which the combined 
influence of slavery and climate, and the resulting 
difference of character and habits were drawing be- 
tween the Xorthern and the Sotithern States. He im- 
agined, indeed, that slavery would make it the special 
interest of the latter to cling to the Union, as they had 
every reason to fear the consequences if they were left 
alone with their negroes ; but he doubted whether 
this bond of interest would prove ultimately as 
strong as the antagonism of sentiment. The system 
of party in America he never seems to have clearly 
understood, and he altogether failed to foresee the 
enormous power and the corrupting influence of ' the 
Machine.'' 

The America he described was, in some respects, 
very unlike that of our own day. He speaks of a des- 
potism of opinion which prevented all free expression 
of independent, eccentric, or heretical ideas ; of Ame- 
rican dislike to general ideas and theoretical discover- 



124 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. i. 

ies ; of a jealousy of wealth which compelled rich men, 
like the Jews of the Middle Ages^, to abstain from all 
the ostentation of luxur}^ These things are wholly 
changed. America is no longer a country without 
pauperism and without great wealth. It contains some 
of the largest fortunes in the world. American wealth 
is certainly by no means averse to ostentation, and is 
rather peculiarly apt to take forms that are dangerous 
and injurious to the community. We are accustomed 
to hear, in some quarters, the enormous landed proper- 
ties possessed by a few English landlords described as 
a great evil ; but as long as those Avho wish to buy 
land, or to take land on a long lease, have no difficulty 
in doing so. it is not easy to see what real interest is 
seriously injured. The power the great landlord pos- 
sesses may, no doubt, be abused ; but great abuse is 
neither easy nor common, while the benefits resulting 
to the nation from the existence of this class are very 
real and evident. But, of all forms that great wealth 
can take, I know of none that gives greater opportuni- 
ties of or temptations to abuse than that of the railway 
king, who controls for his own selfish purposes the 
chief lines of communication in the country. In no 
other country has this class of men been so prominent as 
in America, and in no other has their power been more 
hideously abused. Nowhere else have there been such 
scandalous examples of colossal, ostentatious fortunes 
built up by reckless gambling, by the acquisition of 
gigantic monopolies, by a deadly and unscrupulous 
competition bringing ruin into countless homes, by a 
systematic subordination of public to private interests, 
by enormous political and municipal corruption. If 
such men as Lincoln, and Emerson, and Lowell have, 
in our generation, represented with supreme perfection 
the distinctive ])eauty of the American type, such a 



CH. I. AMERICAN RAILROADS AND TRUSTS 125 

career as that of Jay Gould has, in its own way, been 
not less truly characteristic. 

Integrity in the management of great companies and 
corporations is certainly not, in these latter days, a 
characteristic of the Anglo-Saxon race on either side of 
the Atlantic, but I believe it is even less so in America 
than in England. The contrast between the manage- 
ment of railways in England and in the United States 
is extremely significant. America is now one of the 
richest countries in the world, and its people have cer- 
tainly no superiors in business talent. Yet it has been 
stated on excellent authority that, in the fifteen years 
between 1875 and 1890, the aggregate foreclosure sales 
on the railways of the United States comprised 50,525 
miles, with 12,865,000,000 of combined stocks and 
bonds, or an average of 1191,000,000 per annum. In 
1890, twenty-nine companies were subject to foreclosure 
sales. ^ A great railway authority, speaking in the be- 
ginning of 1894, said : ' There is no less than one- 
fourth of the American railways in extent of mileage 
and capital now under the control of the courts of 
law, and during the year 1893 alone seventy-four rail- 
way companies including a mileage of 30,000 miles and 
a capital of 360 millions sterling, passed into the hands 
of receivers. '' ^ Making the fullest allowance for trade 
depressions and vicissitudes, and for currency troubles, 
what an amount of gigantic and deliberate dishonesty, 
as well as unscrupulous gambling, does such a state of 
things represent ! The system of monopolising articles 
of the first necessity, under the name of Trusts, in 
order to force up their price, which is one of the most 



^ JVorth American Review^ at a meeting of the Grand Trunk 

1891, p. 84; see, too, Professor Railway Company, April 30, 

Ely's Socialism, pp. 270-71. 1894, p. 4. 

"^ Speech of Sir Henry Tyler 



126 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

mischieyous forms that modern industry has assumed, 
has been especially American, and the origin of some 
of the greatest American fortunes. 

These evils are certainly not unconnected with poli- 
tical conditions. In a country where there is no rank, 
and where political eminence gives little or no dignity, 
the thirst for wealth acquires a maddening power. Cor- 
rupt political organisations come in constant contact 
with great railway and industrial corporations, and 
each can do much to assist and to demoralise the 
other. Even independently of these mutual services, 
there is an analogy between the two things. To run a 
company is very like running the machine, and the 
low standard which joublic opinion admits in the one 
is, not unnaturally, extended to the other. 

Slavery has passed away in America, and with it one 
great blot and danger has disappeared ; but the negro 
race, with its doubtful future, remains. The character 
of the constituencies has been profoundly lowered by 
the negro voters, and the extraordinary prevalence and 
ferocity of lynch law seems to show that the old habits 
of violence which slavery did so much to foster are by 
no means extinct. A great improvement, however, has 
incontestably taken place in the character of American 
foreign policy since the close of the war. The many 
violent and unscrupulous acts that once marked that 
policy were nearly all distinctly traceable to the ascend- 
ency of Southern statesmen. Something was due to 
the character of the men, for the conditions of slave 
labour produce a type which is much more military 
and adventurous than pacific and industrial. But the 
main cause was the imperious necessity imposed on 
these States of acquiring new slave territories, in order 
to counteract the increasing preponderance which in- 
creasing population was giving to the Northern States, 



CH. I. AMERICAN CIVILISATION 127 

and thus secure their share of power in the Union. 
This was the origin of the annexation of Texas ; of the 
conquest of New Mexico and California ; of the fili- 
bustering expedition of General Lopez against Cuba in 
1851 ; of the unscrupulous attempts to force a quarrel 
upon Spain in 1854, in order to find a pretext for seiz- 
ing Cuba ; of the shameless Ostend manifesto, in which 
American ministers declared their determination to 
acquire Cuba by force if they could not do so by pur- 
chase ; of the countenance that was given to the fili- 
bustering expedition of AYilliam Walker to Nicaragua 
in 1857 ; of the renewed attempts to acquire Cuba in 
1858 and 1859. Since the question of secession has been 
settled this spirit of aggression seems to have wholly 
passed out of American foreign policy. There have 
been occasions when American statesmen, in order to 
win the favour of some class of voters, have shown a 
disregard of the courtesies and decorum of international 
dealings wliicli no European country would have dis- 
played, but in the great lines of her foreign policy, 
America has of late years been in general eminently 
honourable and unaggressive. It is no small thing that 
this vast section of the human race, so rich in the 
promise of the future, has wholly escaped the milita- 
rism that is corroding the greatest Powers of Europe, 
and that its gigantic energies have been steadily directed 
in the paths of peace. 

The feature of American civilisation which has most 
struck European observers has been its extremely one- 
sided character. It is a supremely great industrial 
civilisation, generating to the highest degree the quali- 
ties, capacities and inventions that are needed for in- 
dustrial life, and bringing in its train widely diffused 
comfort, education and self-respect ; but there are cer- 
tain sides in which it still ranks much below the civili- 



128 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

sations of Europe. Tocqueville and his generation were 
much struck with this. Tocqueville said that America 
had hitherto produced only a very small number of re- 
markable writers, that she had produced no great his- 
torians, and no poets, and that there were third-rate 
towns in Europe which published in a year more works 
of literature than all the twenty-four States of Ame- 
rica.^ Mill, writing in 1840, speaks of "^ the marked 
absence in America of original efforts in literature, 
philosophy, and the fine arts ; ' ^ while Carlyle, a few 
years later, very roughly declared that America had 
still her battle to fight ; that though the quantity of 
her cotton, dollars, industry and resources was almost 
unspeakable, she had as yet produced no great thought, 
or noble thing that one could worship or loyally ad- 
mire ; that her chief feat in history had been to beget, 
' with a rapidity beyond recorded exam. pie, eighteen 
millions of the greatest bores ever seen in this world 
before. ^^ 

This last judgment is certainly more remarkable for 
its vigour than for its judicial impartiality. Since 
Carlyle wrote America has produced some admirable 
literature ; it has produced several considerable histo- 
rians, some graceful and justly popular poets, some 
excellent critics, novelists and moralists, and a vein of 
humour which is perhaps more distinctively American 
than any other element in its literature. It has, espe- 
cially, produced some of the most beautiful literary 
lives in the whole history of letters — lives true, simple, 
laborious and affectionate, singularly free from the 
jealousies and extravagances that deface so many pages 
of literary biography, absolutely free from that taint of 

' Democratie en Amerique^ ii. ^ Latter-day Pamphlets: ' The 

233. Present Time.' 

'^ Dissertations^ ii. 42. 



CH. I. PAUCITY OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA 129 

impurity which has passed so deeply into the contem- 
porary literatures of Europe. But, when all this is 
said, we cannot but ask whether the America of the 
nineteenth century has produced much in the fields of 
thought, or literature, or art that is really great ; any- 
thing comparable to what Germany or France has pro- 
duced during the same period ; anything comparable 
to what might have been expected from a rich, highly 
educated, and pacific nation, which now numbers more 
than sixty millions of souls, and is placed, in some re- 
spects, in more favourable circumstances than any 
other nation in the world. A curious passage in an 
essay on C banning which Renan wrote some forty years 
ago describes the impression which American civilisa- 
tion at that time left on the mind of one of the most 
brilliant of Frenchmen. ' If it were necessary,^ he 
says, ^that Italy with her past, or America with her 
future, should be blotted out of existence, which would 
leave the greater void in the heart of humanity ? What 
has all America produced that can compare with a ray 
of that infinite glory that adorns an Italian town, even 
of the second or third order — Florence, Pisa, Sienna, 
Perugia ? Before New York and Boston reach in the 
scale of human greatness a rank that is comparable to 
these towns, how many steps have they still to make ! ' ^ 
There is, no doubt, exaggeration in such language ; 
there are forms of very genuine human greatness that 
it fails to recognise. But it is impossible not to feel 
that, on the intellectual and aesthetic side, America 
has not yet fulfilled her part, and that an unduly 
large proportion of her greatest achievements belong 
to a time when she had not a tithe of her present pop- 
ulation and wealth. Washington and Franklin and 



^ Etudes d'Hisioire Religieuse. 

VOL. I. 



130 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

Hamilton, the Constitution of 1787, the Federalist 
and the Commentaries of Judge Story, have not been 
eclipsed. 

Many causes have been assigned for this intellectual 
sterility, continuing long after America had taken her 
place among the great nations of the world. Tocque- 
ville believed that there was no country with less 
intellectual independence and less real liberty of dis- 
cussion than America, or in which the expression of 
unpopular opinion was more bitterly resented ; and he 
said that there were no great American writers because 
' literary genius cannot exist without liberty of thought, 
and there is no liberty of thought in America.^ ^ Mill, 
expanding another passage from Tocqueville, described 
America as, 'intellectually speaking, a province of 
England — a province in which the great occupation 
of the inhabitants is making money, because for that 
they have peculiar facilities, and are, therefore, like 
the people of Manchester or Birmingham, for the 
most part contented to receive the higher branches of 
knowledge ready-made from the capital.^ ^ Maine at- 
tributed much to the long refusal of the Congress to 
grant an international copyright. The want of such 
copyright effectually crushed American authorship in 
the Home market by the competition of the unpaid 
and appropriated works of British authors, and ' con- 
demned the whole American community to a literary 
servitude unparalleled in the history of thought.^ ^ 



' Democratie en Amerique^ ii. don, but the intellectual life 

149, 152. that produces them comes from 

'^ Disseriations^ ii. 43; com- all parts of the kingdom, and in 
pare Tocqueville, ii. 58. I do a very large degree from the 
not tliink Mill's ilhistration a great provincial towns, 
happy one. Most English books, ^ Maine's Popular Govern- 
no doubt, are published in Lon- ment^ p. 247. 



CH. I. PAUCITY OF LITERATURE IN AMERICA 131 

In all this there is much truth ; but it must, I 
think, be added that modern democracy is not favour- 
able to the higher forms of intellectual life. Democ- 
racy levels down quite as much as it levels up. The 
belief in the equality of man, the total absence of the 
spirit of reverence, the apotheosis of the average judg- 
ment, the fever and the haste, the advertising and 
sensational spirit which American life so abundantly 
generates, and which the American press so vividly re- 
flects, are all little favourable to the production of 
great works of beauty or of thought, of long medita- 
tion, of sober taste, of serious, uninterrupted study. 
Such works have been produced in America, but in 
small numbers and under adverse conditions. The 
habit, too, which has so long existed in America, and 
which is rapidly growing in England, of treating the 
private lives of eminent men as if they were public 
property ; of forcing their opinions on all subjects into 
constant publicity by newspaper interviews ; of multi- 
plying demands upon their time for public functions 
for which they have no special aptitude, adds greatly 
to the evil. Among the advantages which England de- 
rives from her aristocracy, not the least is the service 
it renders to literature by providing a class of men who 
are admirably fitted for presidential and other public 
functions, which in another society would have been 
largely thrown on men of letters. No one can fail to 
observe how large a proportion of the Americans who 
have shown distinguished talent in literature and art 
have sought in European life a more congenial atmos- 
phere than they could find at home. 

In spite of all retarding influences, America will, no 
doubt, one day occupy a far higher position than at 
present in the intellectual guidance of the world. It 
is probable that the concession of international copy- 



132 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

right, placing American authors on the same footing 
with foreign ones, will hasten that day, and there are 
clear signs that a school of very serious scholarshiiD and 
very excellent writing is arising among them. Many 
of the peccant humours of the body politic will, no 
doubt, be ultimately dispersed. The crudest, most 
ignorant, most disorderly elements of European life 
have been poured into America as into a great alembic, 
and are being gradually transformed into a new type. 
The enormously corrupting influences which New 
York and some other immigration centres have exer- 
cised on American politics must diminish when they 
cease to be what Americans call ' pivot States," holding 
the balance between rival parties, and when the centre 
of power moves onward towards the west. A people 
supremely endowed with energy and intelligence, and 
among whom moral and religious influences are very 
strong, can scarcely fail sooner or later to mould their 
destinies to high and honourable ends. 

Optimism certainly reigns more widely in America 
than in Europe, and Americans are the best judges 
of their own institutions and future. Serious clouds 
seem to hang on their horizon. The decay, in some 
parts of America, of family life through the excessive 
facility of divorce ; the alarming prevalence of finan- 
cial dishonesty on a large scale ; the strange and ominous 
increase of ordinary crime, which contrasts remarka- 
bly with its steady diminution in Great Britain ; ^ the 
profligacy that still reigns in political and municipal 
life, and the indifference with which that profligacy 
is contemplated, afford much ground for melancholy 
thought. It is contrary to all past experience that 



' iSee on this subject a remarkable article, by Mr. Lea, in The 
Formn^ August 1894, 



CH. I. THE POLICY OF PROTECTION 133 

political corruption should be a mere excrescence in a 
nation, affecting either slightly or not at all the deeper 
springs of national morals. As the country fills up, as 
national expenses increase, as the problems of govern- 
ment become more difficult and delicate, the necessity 
of placing the Administration in all its branches in 
trustworthy and honest hands must be more felt, and 
the future of America seems to me very largely to de- 
pend upon the success with which her reformers can 
attain this end. Something considerable, as we have 
seen, has been already done ; yet some of the worst in- 
stances of corrupt rings have been posterior to the 
downfall of the Tammany rule at New York, which 
was supposed to mark the beginning of a new era. 
The evidence which was brought before the Senate of 
'New York in 1894, disclosing the enormous and sys- 
tematic corruption of the police force of that great 
city, is in itself sufficient to show how little this hope 
has been fulfilled. ^ 

The policy of Protection in America, which has 
been carried to such a high point since the war, is no 
new thing. It existed, though with some fluctuations, 
through a great part of earlier American history ; ^ the 
high duties imposed during the war were amply justi- 
fied by the necessity of obtaining money for its support, 
and their continuance for some years after the peace 
was probably justified by the transcendent importance 
of reducing rapidly an unparalleled debt. With the 
ideas that are now floating through the world, nothing 
could be more dangerous than for a pure democracy, in 
times of difficulty or poverty, to find itself burdened 



1 Many particulars about this American Protection, see Tans- 
will be found in The Forunif sig's Tariff I/istory of the Uni- 
August 1894. ted States (New York, 1888). 

^ On the early history of 



134 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

with an enormous debt taxation for the fulfilment of 
ancient contracts. The statesmen who followed the 
war have at least secured America from this danger. 
But the immense increase of Protection^ which began 
with the Woollen Ad of 1867 and the Copper Act of 
1869^ and which culminated in the McKinley tarilf, 
was largely due to other motives. If the best Ameri- 
can authorities may be trusted, it includes as much 
purely class legislation, intended to support class inter- 
ests and carried by corrupt means, as can be found in 
the most effete monarchy of Europe. 

The wonderful surplus which for many years existed 
in consequence of the high protective duties astonished 
Europe, but not more so than the manner in which it 
was expended. I suppose there is no page in the finan- 
cial history of the Avorld more extraordinary than the 
history of the American pension list. At the close of 
the war pensions vv'^ere, very properly, given to soldiers 
who were disabled in the course of it, and to wives of 
soldiers who had been married during the war, and 
who were left widows. It was naturally supposed that 
in America, as elsewhere, the war pensions would 
diminish as time rolled on and as the actors in the 
struggle passed away. For some years there seemed 
every prospect that this would have been the case ; 
and there can be no doubt that it would have been so 
if the Protectionist interest had not found it necessary 
to maintain and expend an enormous surplus. The 
result of that necessity is, that in a long period of un- 
broken peace a war pension list has been created in the 
United States which far exceeds in magnitude any 
other that is known in history. Fifty-seven years after 
the war of 1812 pensions were voted to its surviving 
soldiers and to their widows ; thirty-nine years after 
the Mexican War a similar measure was taken in 



CH. I. THE PENSION LIST 135 

favour of the survivors of that war. The list was 
made to include men who had been disabled long after 
the war, and by causes totally unconnected with it, 
and widows who had not been married, who in many 
cases had not been born, when the last shot was fired. 
Personation, and other frauds almost grotesque in their 
cynicism and enormity, became notoriously common, 
and were practised with the most absolute impunity. 
Multitudes of young women formed real or pretended 
connections with old men for the purpose of qualifying 
for a pension. It appears from official documents 
that, in 1892, there were on the pension list 165 per- 
sons pensioned as survivors of the war in 1812, and 
there were no less than 6,657 women who were pen- 
sioned as widows of the soldiers in that war. The 
pension list trebled between 1880 and 1884. In 1893, 
it was stated that half a million of dollars a day were 
distributed on account of a war which had terminated 
nearly thirty years before. In 1893 there were 900,- 
000 names on the pension list, and 165 millions of dol- 
lars, or thirty-three million pounds, was appropriated 
by Congress to the pension service. 

It is not surprising that such an administration of 
public money should have produced a great financial 
revulsion, and that the period of enormous surpluses 
should have been followed by a period of almost equally 
enormous deficits. No other country, indeed, could 
have borne such an expenditure, and certainly public 
opinion in no other country would have tolerated it.^ 



' A great deal of information Times^ January 29, 1894. It 

about the American pensions appears, however, that in the 

will be found in The Forum^ year ending June 30, 1894, the 

May and June, 1893, and in the expenditure on the pension list 

North Americmi Review^ April had sunk to 27,960,892/. (T'fwes, 

and May, 1893; see, too, the October 30, 1894). 



136 DE>[OCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. i. 

It would be perhaps a paradox to say that the go- 
vernment of a country which is so greats so prosperous, 
and so pacific as the United States has not been a suc- 
cess ; but, on the whole, American democracy appears 
to me to carry with it at least as much of warning as 
of encouragement, especially when we remember the 
singularly favourable circumstances under which the 
experiment has been tried, and the impossibility of 
reproducing those conditions at home. There is one 
point, however, on which all the best observers in 
America, whether they admire or dislike democracy, 
seem agreed. It is, that it is absolutely essential to its 
safe working that there should be a written constitu- 
tion, securing property and contract, placing serious 
obstacles in the way of organic changes, restricting the 
power of majorities, and preventing outbursts of mere 
temporary discontent and mere casual coalitions from 
overthrowing the main pillars of the State. In Ame- 
rica, such safeguards are largely and skilfully provided, 
and to this fact America mainly owes her stability. Un- 
fortunately, in England the men who are doing most 
to plunge the country into democracy are also the bit- 
ter enemies of all these safeguards, by which alone 
a democratic government can be permanently main- 
tained. 



CONSTITUTIONAL CHANGES 137 



CHAPTER II 

The power given in England to a simple majority of a 
single Parliament to change, with the assent of the 
Crown, any portion of the Constitution is not a com- 
mon thing among free nations. Italy and Hungary, it 
is true, appear in this respect to stand on the same 
basis as England. In Spain there is a written Consti- 
tution that makes no special mention of provision for 
its own reform, and it is a disputed question whether 
the text of the Constitution can be modified by a 
simple legislative measure of an ordinary Cortes, or 
must be submitted to a Constituent Cortes specially 
summoned for this purpose. But in most constitutions 
there is a distinct line drawn between organic consti- 
tutional changes and ordinary legislation, and careful 
provisions establish the manner in which alone the 
former can be carried into effect. In a large number of 
constitutions, of which those of the Austrian Empire, 
Belgium, and Bavaria may be cited as examples, two- 
thirds majorities are required for constitutional changes. 
In several constitutions it is necessary that such 
changes should be sanctioned by two successive Parlia- 
ments. In the Netherlands they may be demanded by 
a simple majority in one Parliament, but must be 
sanctioned, after a dissolution, by two-thirds majorities 
in its successor. In the German Empire there is a 
provision that fourteen hostile votes in the Federal 
Council constitute on these subjects an absolute veto. 
In France, constitutional changes, after being voted by 



138 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

majorities in each of the two Houses, must be ap- 
proved by a majority in a National Assembly con- 
sisting of the two Houses sitting and voting together. 
In Switzerland they may be proposed by either Legis- 
lative Chamber, or by 50,000 vote-possessing citizens, 
but they cannot become law until they have been 
sanctioned by a direct popular vote taken in the form 
of a Referendum.^ 

Probably none of these provisions are as really effica- 
cious as those which are contained in the Constitutions 
of the United States. None of them exist in the Brit- 
ish Constitution, or in the constitutions of the great 
colonial democracies that are growing up under the 
English sceptre. One remarkable attempt to introduce 
the American principle into an English colony was, in- 
deed, made by the great Australian statesman, Went- 
worth, who, in 1853, introduced into his scheme for 
the Constitution of New South Wales a clause pro- 
viding that alterations in the Constitution could only 
be carried by two-thirds majorities. Unfortunately, 
this clause ultimately miscarried in England, and in 
this, as in the other Colonies, the power of an upper 
Chamber and the small measure of restraint involved 
in connection with the mother country alone restrict 
the power of unbridled democracy.^ 

Nothing, indeed, is more remarkable in our consti- 
tutional history than the small stress which has been 
placed in England upon mere legislative machinery, 
upon Constitutional laws definitely tracing the respec- 
tive limits and powers of different institutions. The 
system of checks and counterchecks which it has been 



' Report on the Majorities re- sented to the House of Lords, 
quired in Foreign Legislatures April 1893. 
for Constitutional Changes, pj-G- "^ Rusden's History of Aus- 

tralia, iii. 71-137. 



fjH. II. THE BRITISH CONSTITUTION 139 

the object of written constitutions to maintain lias 
been roughly maintained in England by the great di- 
versities that long existed in the constituencies ; by 
the powerful organisation of many distinct, and some- 
times conflicting, interests ; by the great influence and 
essentially representative character of the House of 
Lords, It has been supported by a network of usages, 
traditions, compromises, and understandings which 
liave no real or sufficient basis in the letter of the law, 
but which have long been universally accepted. Many 
of the most important working elements in the Con- 
stitution — the nature of the Cabinet, the functions 
of the Prime Minister, the dignity and the attitude 
of the Speaker, the initiative of the Government in 
matters of finance, the extent to which the House of 
Lords may use its veto — rest essentially on the founda- 
tion of custom. It is absolutely indispensable to the 
working of the whole machine that it should be in 
the hands of honest and trustworthy men, of men 
determined to subordinate on great occasions their 
personal and party interests to the interests of the 
State ; imbued with a genuine spirit of compromise, 
and cordially in harmony with the general spirit of 
the Constitution. As long as such a spirit prevails 
in Parliament and governs the constituencies, so long 
the British Constitution will prove a success. If 
this spirit is no longer found among rulers and Par- 
liaments and constituencies, there is no constitution 
which may be more easily dislocated, and which pro- 
vides less means of checking excesses of bad govern- 
ment. 

'Upon the power,' wrote Adam Smith, 'which the 
leading men, the natural aristocracy of every country, 
have of preserving or defending their respective im- 
portance depends the stability and duration of every 



140 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

system of free government/^ This truth has been 
always strongly felt in England, and it has sometimes 
been pushed to very extreme consequences. Thus, in 
the debates upon the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
some of the most considerable defenders of these laws 
refused to argue the question on merely economical 
grounds. They maintained that the preponderance of 
the landed interest was a political end of the first mag- 
nitude. They argued that it secured for the nation a' 
governing class whose interests were indissolubly con- 
nected with the permanent prosperity of England ; 
whose class standard of honour placed them above all 
suspicion of personal corruption, and who, by living 
among their people and conducting the local govern- 
ment of their counties, had acquired in a high mea- 
sure the kinds of knowledge and of capacity that are 
most needed in political life. Long after the sceptre 
of power had j^assed from the landed gentry to the 
middle classes, the old belief, or prejudice, or super- 
stition that the administration of government ought 
to be chiefly entrusted to gentlemen, prevailed, and, in 
spite of all democratic agitations, it is certainly very 
far from extinct. 

As I have already intimated, this belief, like many 
others which are now often very disdainfully treated, 
is by no means incapable of defence. The position of 
a public man is essentially that of a trustee, and inter- 
ests of the most enormous importance depend largely on 
his character. To place the direction of affairs in the 
hands of honest, trustworthy, and competent men, 
though it is not the sole, is certainly the most impor- 
tant end of politics, and an immense proportion of 
the calamities that politicians have brought upon the 



Wealth of Nations, Book iv. ch. 7. 



CH. II. GOVERNMENT BY GENTLEMEN 141 

world are due to the management of great political in- 
terests having passed into the hands of mere scheming 
adventurers. Honesty and dishonesty belong to all 
ranks and to all grades of fortune, but in dealing with 
masses of men we must judge by averages and proba- 
bilities, and chiefly by the strength of temptation and 
the pressure of interest. ' How easy it is/ as Becky 
Sharp said, ' to be virtuous on 5,000/. a year ! ' The 
fact that a trustee who is entrusted with vast money 
interests is himself not a needy, struggling, embarrassed 
man, but the possessor of a competent fortune, is gen- 
erally recognised as furnishing some guarantee, though, 
unfortunately, by no means a sufficient one, that he 
will not dishonestly abuse his trust. And the strength 
of this presumption is greatly increased if the cha- 
racter of his fortune is not fugitive and movable, but 
permanent and stationary, and if he holds a desirable 
social position which depends mainly upon opinion, 
and would be inevitably destroyed by an act of private 
dishonesty. 

This is the mode of reasoning on which men inva- 
riably act in the transactions of private life, and it is 
equally applicable to politics. The code of honour 
which the conventionalities of society attach to the 
idea of a gentleman is, indeed, a somewhat capricious 
thing, and certainly not co-extensive with the moral 
law. It may be, and often is, compatible with acts 
that are, in truth, profoundly base and immoral. 
Without forfeiting this position in the eyes of the 
world, men have plunged their country, through mo- 
tives of mere personal ambition, into the horrors of 
war ; have sought for honours, or power, or party 
triumphs, by shameful acts of political apostasy and 
shameful incitements to class warfare ; have purchased 
majorities by allying themselves with dishonest men 



142 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

pursuing dishonest ends ; have framed constitutions to 
enable their allies to carry those ends into effect. Men 
of old families and ample means may be found among 
the active agents or the servile tools in some of the 
worst political transactions of our time. All this is 
profoundly true ; and it is also true that when any 
one class, be it high or low, obtains an uncontrolled, or 
even a greatly preponderating, power, its policy will 
exhibit a class bias. At the same time, it is no less 
true that on special subjects, and within a restricted 
sphere, the code of honour of a gentleman is the most 
powerful of all restraining influences, more powerful 
even than religion with ordinary men. Wherever it 
pervades the public service men will soon learn to re- 
cognise that public servants cannot be bribed or cor- 
rupted ; that in dealing with public money they will 
not be guilty of malversation ; that their word may be 
trusted, that they are not likely to act by tortuous or 
intriguing methods. The credit of England in the 
world depends largely upon this conviction, and that 
credit has been no small element of her prosperity. 
Imputations against men in high office, which in many 
countries are constantly made, easily believed, and 
sometimes proved, are in England at once felt to be 
incredible. One thing, at least, is very apparent to all 
serious observers — if the government of England passes 
altogether out of the hands of the kind of men who 
have hitherto directed it, it will speedily fall into the 
hands of professional politicians. What the character 
and tendencies of such politicians are likely to be, the 
example of the United States abundantly shows, and it 
shows also how different must be the constitution 
under which alone they can be safely restrained. 

I do not think there is any single fact which is more 
evident to impartial observers than the declining effi- 



CH. II. DISTRUST OF REPRESENTATIVE BODIES 143 

ciency and the lowered character of parliamentary go- 
vernment. The evil is certainly not restricted to Eng- 
land. All over Europe, and, it may be added, in a 
great measure in the United States, complaints of the 
same kind may be heard. A growing distrust and 
contempt for representative bodies has been one of the 
most characteristic features of the closing years of the 
nineteenth century. In some countries, as we have al- 
ready seen, the parliamentary system means constantly 
shifting government, ruined finances, frequent mili- 
tary revolts, the systematic management of constituen- 
cies. In most countries it has proved singularly sterile 
in high talent. It seems to have fallen more and more 
under the control of men of an inferior stamp : of 
skilful talkers or intriguers ; or sectional interests or 
small groups ; and its hold upon the affection and re- 
spect of nations has visibly diminished. Laveleye has 
truly noted the sigh of relief that is felt in many lands 
when a Parliament is prorogued, and the growing feel- 
ing that America has acted wisely in restricting many 
of her State legislatures to biennial sessions. He ob- 
serves, with some cynicism, that Italy has one special 
advantage in her capital — the Roman malaria effectu- 
ally abridges the sessions of her Parliament. 

This great decline in the weight of representative 
bodies, which has made ^parliamentarism' almost a 
by-word in many nations, has advanced contempora- 
neously with the growth of democracy. In a large 
degree, at least, it may be clearly traced to the general 
establishment of universal suffrage as the basis of rep- 
resentation. It is being generally discovered that the 
system Avliich places the supreme power in the hands 
of mere majorities, consisting necessarily of the poor- 
est and most ignorant, whatever else it may do, does 
not produce Parliaments of surpassing excellence. One 



144 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

tiling, however, must be observed. Ignorance in the 
elective body does not naturally produce ignorance in 
the representative body. It is much more likely to 
produce dishonesty. Intriguers and demagogues, play- 
ing successfully on the passions and the credulity of 
the ignorant and of the poor, form one of the great 
characteristic evils and dangers of our time. 

In England, no one can be insensible to the change 
in the tone of the House of Commons within the mem- 
ory of living men. The old understandings and tra- 
ditions, on which its deliberations have been for many 
generations successfully conducted, have largely disap- 
peared, and new and stringent regulations have been 
found necessary. Scenes of coarse and brutal insult, 
of deliberate obstruction, of unrestrained violence, cul- 
minating on one occasion in actual blows, have been 
displayed within its walls, to which there have been few 
parallels in other legislatures. Perhaps the nearest 
are to be found in the American Congress in the years 
of fiercely excited passions that preceded the Civil War. 
It is true that these scenes may be chiefly traced to one 
party, which made it its avowed object to degrade, 
dislocate, and paralyse the parliamentary machine till 
their objects were attained ; but the contagion of their 
example and the connivance, through party motives, 
of other members have been very evident. 

On the other hand, the power of arbitrarily closing 
debates, which has been placed in the hands of majori- 
ties, has been grossly abused. It has been made use of 
not merely to abridge, but to prevent, discussion on 
matters of momentous importance. Many clauses of 
a Home Rule Bill which went to the very root of the 
British Constitution ; which, in the opinion of the 
great majority of competent British statesmen, would 
have proved tlie inevitable prelude to the dismember- 



CH. II. DECADENCE OF THE HOUSE OP COMMONS 145 

ment and downfall of the Empire ; which was sup- 
ported by a party depending on the votes of men who 
were ostentatiously indifferent to the w^ell-being of the 
Empire^, and was strenuously opposed by a great ma- 
jority of the representatives of England, and by a 
considerable majority of the representatives of Great 
Britain, were forced through the House of Commons by 
the application of the Closure, and without any possi- 
bility of the smallest discussion. Nothing but the veto 
of the House of Lords prevented a measure of the first 
importance, carried by such means and by a bare ma- 
jority, from becoming law. 

And while this change has been passing over the 
spirit of the House of Commons, its powers and its 
pretensions are constantly extending. The enormous 
extension of the practice of questioning ministers has 
immensely increased the intervention of the House in 
the most delicate functions of the Executive. It in- 
sists on measures and negotiations, in every stage of 
their inception, being brought before it, and resolu- 
tions emanating from independent sections have more 
than once exercised a most prejudicial influence, if not 
on foreign affairs, at least on the government of India. 
At the same time, the claim is more and more loudly 
put forward that it should be treated as if it were the 
sole power in the State. The veto of the sovereign has 
long since fallen into abeyance. Her constitutional 
right of dissolving Parliament if she believes that a 
minister or a majority do not truly represent the feel- 
ings of the nation, and are acting contrary to its inter- 
ests, might sometimes be of the utmost value, but it is 
never likely to be put in force. Her slight power, in 
the rare cases of nearly balanced claims, of selecting 
the minister to whom she will entrust the government, 
and the slight influence she still retains over the dispo- 

VOL. I. 10 



146 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

sition of patronage, are regarded with extreme jealousy ; 
while every interference of the House of Lords with the 
proposed legislation of the Commons has been, during 
a considerable part of the last few years, made the sig- 
nal of insolent abuse. It would be difficult to conceive 
a greater absurdity than a second Chamber which has 
no power of rejecting, altering, or revising ; and this 
is practically the position to which a large number of 
members of the House of Commons, and of their sup- 
porters outside the House, would reduce the House of 
Lords. 

We can hardly have a more grotesque exhibition of 
this spirit than was displayed during the discussion of 
the Parish Council Bill in 1894. The Bill came for 
the first time before Parliament. It was one on which 
the House of Lords, consisting of the great proprietors 
of the soil, could speak with pre-eminent knowledge 
and authority, while a vast proportion of the majority 
in the House of Commons had not the remotest con- 
nection with land, and were notoriously acting under 
mere motives of party interest. The Bill of the Com- 
mons, in its principle and main outlines, was accepted 
by the Lords, and they went no further than to alter it 
in a few of its details. But because they exercised in 
this manner their clearest and most indisputable con- 
stitutional right, on a subject with which they were 
peculiarly competent to deal, they were denounced as 
if they had committed an outrage on the nation. The 
last ministerial speech with which Mr. Cladstone closed 
his long political career^ was an abortive attempt to 
kindle a popular agitation against them on that ground. 

The enormous and portentous development of par- 
liamentary speaking, which has so greatly impeded 



March 1, 1894. 



CH. II. PARLIAMENTARY SPEAKING 147 

public business^, is due to many causes. In the first 
place, the House of Commons of 670 members is far 
too large for the purposes for which it is intended. It 
is larger than any other legislative body in the world, 
and the nineteenth century has added greatly both to 
its numbers and its speakers. At the beginning of the 
century it received an important addition in the Irish 
members who were brought in by the Union. The abo- 
lition of the small boroughs and the increasing power 
of the constituencies over their members greatly in- 
creased the average attendance, by making the mem- 
bers much more directly dependent upon their electors. 
The Reform Bills of 1867 and 1885 gave an opportunity 
for some reduction. But, as is usually the case, the 
interests of party and popularity prevailed, and the 
number of members was not diminished, but even 
slightly increased. The scenes of violence, anarchy, 
and deliberate obstruction that have been so frequent 
during late years have done much to destroy that re- 
spect for the House, that timidity in appearing before 
a fastidious audience, which once weighed heavily on 
nearly all new members, and imposed a useful restraint 
on idle speaking. At the same time, the development 
of the provincial papers has made it an easy and desira- 
ble thing for each member to be reported at full in his 
own constituency as a prominent speaker; and the vast 
increase of stump oratory by members of Parliament in 
every town and almost every village has given nearly 
all members a fatal facility. Something, also, has been 
due to the fact that the House of Commons was led or 
profoundly influenced during many years by a very 
great orator, who possessed every form of eloquence 
except conciseness, and who could rarely answer a 
question without making a speech. 

This diffuseness and incontinence of speech has not 



148 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

been the characteristic of the deliberative assemblies 
that have left the greatest mark on the history of the 
world. Jefferson observes in his ^Memoirs/ 'I served 
with Washington in the Legislature of Virginia;, before 
the Revolution, and during it, with Dr. Franklin, in 
Congress. I never heard either of them speak ten 
minutes at a time, nor to any but the main point which 
was to decide the question.^ ' In our own House of 
Commons, old members still remember the terse, di- 
rect character of the speeches of Russell, Palmerston, 
and Disraeli, and many men who have exercised great 
weight and influence in English politics have been sin- 
gularly deficient in the power of speech. The names 
of Lord Althorp, Sir Charles Wood, and the Duke 
of Wellington in the past generation, and of W. H. 
Smith in our own, will at once occur to the reader. 
The dreary torrent of idle, diffusive, insincere talk 
that now drags its slow lengths through so many 
months at Westminster certainly does not contribute to 
raise the character of the House of Commons. It is a 
significant sign that parliamentary reporting has of 
late years greatly declined, and that newspapers which 
would once have competed for the fullest reports of 
parliamentary speeches now content themselves with 
abridgments, or summaries, or even Avith sketches of 
the speakers. 

On the whole, however, it may be questioned whether, 
in the existing state of the British Constitution, this 
diffuseness is an evil. There is some weight in the con- 
tention of Bagehot, that one great advantage of govern- 
ment by debate is, that much talking prevents much 
action, and if it does little to enlighten the subject, it 
at least greatly checks the progress of hasty and revo- 



Life of Jefferson^ i. 179. 



CH. II. INFLUENCE OF THE CAUCUS 149 

lutionary legislation. There are worse things than a 
wasted session, and, in times when the old restraints 
and balances of the Constitution have almost perished, 
the restraint of loquacity is not to be despised. 

It makes the House of Commons, however, a per- 
fectly inefficient instrument for some of the purposes 
it is expected to fulfil. There are large questions, such 
as the reform and codification of great branches of the 
law, which bristle with points of difficulty and differ- 
ence, but which at the same time do not fall within the 
lines of party or affect the balance of power. To carry 
highly complex measures of this kind through a body 
like the present House of Commons is utterly impossi- 
ble, and these much-needed reforms are never likely to 
be accomplished till the Constitution is so far changed 
as to give much larger powers to Committees. 

The independence of Parliament has at the same 
time almost gone. Since the country has committed 
itself to democracy the caucus system — which is but 
another name for the American machine, and which, 
like the American machine, is mainly managed by a 
small number of active politicians — has grown with 
portentous rapidity. It nominates the candidates for 
elections. It dictates their policy in all its details. It 
applies a constant pressure by instructions, remon- 
strances, and deputations at every stage of their task. 
It reduces the ordinary member of Parliament to the 
position of a mere delegate, or puppet, though at the 
same time it tends, like many other democratic institu- 
tions, to aggrandise enormously the power of any single 
individual who is sufficiently powerful and conspicuous 
to enlist the favour of the nation and dominate and 
direct the caucus machinery. What is called ' the one- 
man power Ms a very natural product of democracy. 
Mr. Bright once said that the greatest danger of our 



150 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

present system of government is surprise — the power 
which a bold and brilliant leader possesses of commit- 
ting his party by his own will to a new policy which had 
never been maturely considered or accepted. It is no- 
torious that the most momentous new departure made 
by the Liberal party in our day — the adoption of the 
policy of Home Rule — was due to a single man, who 
acted without consultation with his colleagues. 

At the same time, a great change has taken place in 
the relations of Government to the House of Commons. 
In order to guard against the dangers to be feared from 
an unrestrained House, opposite methods have been 
employed in the United States and in England. In 
the former, the ministers form no part of the represen- 
tative Chamber, and the vote of that Chamber is in- 
competent to overthrow them. In England, on the 
other hand, the Ministry is the creature of the House 
of Commons ; but the organised force of a united Ca- 
binet is the most powerful restraint upon its proceed- 
ings. Most of the old power of the sovereign, as it has 
been truly said, has now passed to the Cabinet, and a 
solid body of the leaders of the majority, whose guid- 
ance is indispensable to the ascendency of their party, 
is able to exercise a strong controlling influence on all 
parliamentary proceedings. But the situation is much 
modified when Parliaments break up into small groups. 
All over the world this has been one of the most marked 
and significant tendencies of democratic Parliaments, 
and it will probably eventually lead to a profound 
change in the system of parliamentary government. 
In France, in Germany, and in Italy, as well as in many 
minor States, this disintegration may be shown to its 
full extent ; in Great Britain it has made considerable 
progress. Not many years ago Belgium was said to be 
the only European country where the Legislature was 



CH. II. PARLIAMENTARY GROUPS 151 

still divided into only two distinct parties.' One of the 
first results of lier lowered suffrage has been the intro- 
duction into her Parliament of a new and powerful So- 
cialist group. 

The results of this disintegration are very manifest. 
Government in its relation to the House of Commons 
loses its old commanding and controlling authority. 
The Cabinet had already lost much of its initiating 
power by the growth of the caucus system, which dic- 
tates the policy of the party. In a Parliament divided 
into several groups its strength is still further dimi- 
nished. A coalition may at any time overthrow it. It 
depends upon the concurrence of many distinct groups, 
governed by different motives, aiming at different ob- 
jects, representing different shades of political feeling. 
It is obliged to conciliate by separate bribes these dif- 
ferent sections, or to discover some cry that may rally 
them, some active and aggressive policy that may se- 
cure their support, and to which they will subordinate 
their special objects. 

This evil is greatly accentuated by the modern dis- 
covery that the disintegration of parties is exceedingly 
conducive to the triumph of minor sectional objects. 
A group of men representing opinions and aiming at 
objects which are only those of a small minority of the 
nation, may obtain a decisive influence if it keeps apart 
from the great party organisations, subordinates all 
other considerations to its own objects, and at times 
when parties are evenly balanced, and when a few votes 
can save or destroy a Government, makes the attain- 
ment of those objects the price of its adhesion. Where 
there are only two strongly organised parties these 
minor questions fall into their natural place ; but in a 



Laveleye, Le Gouvernement dans la Democratie^ ii. 101. 



152 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. it. 

Parliament broken into many fractions^ each fraction 
can exercise a power utterly disproportionate to its 
numbers and to its real hold upon the country. The 
action of the independent Irish Home Kule party in 
the parliamentary system has been the most remarkable 
instance of this truth, and other groups are evidently 
constituting themselves in the same way, and are like- 
ly to pursue their objects by the same parliamentary 
methods. 

The consequences of all this are very far-reaching. 
If my forecast is not erroneous, it must end in the de- 
struction of that ascendency of the House of Commons 
which was built up in the days of middle- class su- 
premacy and of strong party organisation. It produces 
also a weakness and an instability in the executive 
power which is often very injurious to the interests of 
the nation. On the whole, however, this weakness 
seems likely to be greater under Liberal than under 
Conservative Governments, as the Conservative pai'ty is 
far more homogeneous than its rival. The great re- 
volt of the nation against Radical policy in 1895 has 
created one of the most powerful ministries of the cen- 
tury, resting upon an enormous and substantially ho- 
mogeneous majority in both Houses. But, with the 
fluctuations to which parliamentary government is now 
so liable, no one can suppose that such a majority can 
be permanent. All the signs of the times point to the 
probability in England, as elsewhere, of many minis- 
tries resting on precarious majorities formed out of 
independent or heterogeneous groups. There are few 
conditions less favourable to the healthy working of 
parliamentary institutions, or in which the danger of 
an uncontrolled House of Commons is more evident. 

One consequence of this disintegration of Parliament 
is a greatly increased probability tluit policies which 



CH 11. APPETITE FOR ORGANIC CHANGE 153 

the nation does not really wish for may be carried into 
effect. The process which the Americans call ' log- 
rolling ' becomes very easy. One minority will agree 
to support the objects of another minority on condition 
of receiving in return a similar assistance, and a num- 
ber of small minorities aiming at different objects, no 
one of which is really desired by the majority of the 
nation, may attain their several ends by forming them- 
selves into a political syndicate and mutually co-ope- 
rating. The kind of politics which was notoriously 
adopted on the question of Home Eule illustrates both 
the nature and the danger of this system. The Home 
Eule Bill had been decisively condemned by the con- 
stituencies, and the Government which proposed it 
saw clearly that on that issue alone it was not likely to 
obtain a favourable verdict. It was argued, however, 
that if a Home Eule Government could win the sup- 
port of the electors who desired local option, and the 
disestablishment of the Welsh and Scotch Churches, 
and the abolition of the hereditary element in the 
House of Lords, and legislation shortening the hours of 
labour, and other measures of a democratic character, 
these different parties would constitute a majority that 
would enable the ministers to carry Home Eule in 
spite of the wishes of the nation. 

Probably still more dangerous is the necessity, which 
the existing state of parliamentary representation es- 
tablishes, of seeking for a popular cry, which generally 
means some organic and destructive change in the Con- 
stitution. An appetite for organic change is one of the 
worst diseases that can affect a nation. All real pro- 
gress, all sound national development, must grow out 
of a stable, persistent national character, deeply influ- 
enced by custom and precedent and old traditional 
reverence, habitually aiming at the removal of prac- 



154 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

tical evils and the attainment of practical advantages, 
rather than speculative change. Institutions, like 
trees, can never attain their maturity or produce their 
proper fruits if their roots are perpetually tampered 
with. In no single point is the American Constitu- 
tion more incontestably superior to our own than in 
the provisions by which it has so effectually barred the 
path of organic change that the appetite for such 
change has almost passed away. No one who observes 
English politics with care can fail to see how frequently, 
when a statesman is out of office and his party divided, 
his first step is to mark out some ancient institution for 
attack in order to rally his followers. Personal vanity 
here concurs powerfully with party interests, for men 
who are utterly destitute of real constructive ability 
are capable of attacking an existing institution ; and 
there is no other form of politics in which a noisy 
reputation can be so easily acquired. Instead of wisely 
using the machinery of government for the benefit of 
the whole nation, English politicians have of late j^ears 
been perpetually tampering with it, and a spirit of 
feverish unrest has passed into English politics which, 
if it is not checked, bodes ill for the permanence of 
parliamentary government. 

Both parties have in this respect much to answer 
for. A weak Conservative Government is often tempted 
to outbid its rival and win the support of some discon- 
tented fragment of the Opposition ; and there is no 
Radicalism so dangerous as this, for it finds no external 
body to restrain it, and the Opposition is bound by its 
position to aggravate it. Few pages in our modern 
political history are more discreditable than the story 
of the ' Conservative ' Reform Bill of 1867. A weak 
Liberal Government, on the other hand, depends for 
its support on the concurrence of many semi-detached 



CH. II. ENGLISH RADICALISM 155 

groups, among which extreme politicians often exercise 
a disproportionate power. The Home Eule schism, by 
depriving the party of the greater part of its restrain- 
ing and moderating element, has much increased the 
danger. 

There are few things, also, more disheartening in 
English politics than what may be called the unintel- 
ligent conservatism of English Kadicalism. It moves 
persistently in a few old, well-worn grooves. The 
withdrawal of the control of affairs from the hands 
of the minority who, in the competitions of life, have 
risen to a higher plane of fortune and instruction ; 
the continual degradation of the suffrage to lower and 
lower strata of intelligence ; attacks upon institution 
after institution; a systematic hostility to, the owners 
of landed property, and a disposition to grant much 
the same representative institutions to all portions of 
the Empire, quite irrespectively of their circumstances 
and characters, are the directions in which the ordi- 
nary Eadical naturally moves. In hardly any quarter 
do we find less constructive ability, less power of arriv- 
ing even at a perception of the new evils that have 
arisen or of the new remedies that are required. To 
destroy some institution, or to injure some class, is 
very commonly his first and last idea in constitutional 
policy. 

Another tendency which is very manifestly strength- 
ening in English politics is that of attempting to win 
votes by class bribery. With very large democratic 
constituencies, in which a great proportion of the 
voters are quite indifferent to the main questions of 
party politics, some form of corruption is certain to 
arise. The kinds of bribery, it is true, which prevailed 
in England under an unreformed Parliament have 
either disappeared or greatly diminished. The num- 



156 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

ber of the electors, the secrecy of the vote, and the 
stringency of recent legislation against corruption, have 
had in this respect a salutary effect. The gigantic 
corruption which exists in America under the name of 
the ' spoils system ' has not taken root in England, 
though some recent attempts to tamper, in the inter- 
ests of party, with the old method of appointing magis- 
trates in the counties, and some claims that have been 
put forward by members of Parliament to dictate the 
patronage in their constituencies, show that there are 
politicians who would gladly introduce this poison- 
germ into English life. Happily, however, the system 
of competitive examination places m.ost branches of the 
Civil Service out of the reach of politicians. But a 
form of bribery which is far cheaper to the candidate, 
yet far more costly to the nation, than that to which 
otir grandfathers were accustomed, has rapidly grown. 
As Sir Henry Maine has truly said, the bribery which 
is most to be feared in a democracy is that of ' legis- 
lating away the property of one class and transferring 
it to another.'^ Partial, inequitable taxation, intro- 
duced for the purpose of obtaining votes, is an evil 
which in democratic societies is but too likely to in- 
crease. 

It has been rendered easier by the great fiscal revolu- 
tion which took place in England after the abolition of 
the Corn Laws. A number of widely diffused indirect 
taxes, which were paid in the form of enhanced prices, 
were abolished ; taxation has been more concentrated, 
and it has become very easy to vary both its amount and 
its incidence. It is remarkable that, at a time when this 
process was rapidly advancing, a note of warning and 
of protest was sounded by one of the wisest leaders of 



' Popular Government^ p. 106. 



CH. II. PRINCIPLES OF TAXATION 157 

the Liberals. Sir C. Lewis, in the memorable Budget 
speech which he made as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
in 1857, quoted the following striking passage from 
Arthur Young : ' The mere circumstance of taxes be- 
ing very numerous in order to raise a given sum is a 
considerable step towards equality in the burden fall- 
ing on the people. If I were to define a good system 
of taxation, it should be that of bearing lightly on an 
infinite number of points, heavily on none. In other 
words, that simplicity in taxation is the greatest ad- 
ditional weight that can be given to taxes, and ought 
in every country to be most sedulously avoided." ' That 
opinion,' said Sir Cornewall Lewis, ' though contrary to 
much that we hear at the present day, seems to me to 
be full of wisdom, and to be a most useful practical 
guide in the arrangement of a system of taxation." ^ 

These remarks of Sir Cornewall Lewis were much 
censured at the time ; but I believe that many of our 
best contemporary thinkers will agree with me that 
they contain much truth, and that the concentration 
of taxation into a very few forms has been carried in 
England to an exaggerated extent. In times when 
prosperity is rapidly advancing and when taxation is 
easily borne the evil may be little felt ; but in times of 
receding prosperity it is of no small advantage that the 
burden of taxation should be diffused in many forms 
and over a wide area. As it is much easier in times of 
adversity to raise than to impose a duty, it is often wiser 



^ Northcote's Twenty Years of really equitable taxation that 

of Financial Policy^ J)]). SOd-10. has been yet devised, as those 

There is a remarkable speech of who escaped one tax fall under 

Thiers in favour of a great va- another, and taxation adjusts 

riety of moderate taxes, deliv- itself almost insensibly to ex- 

ered January 19, 1831. He con- penditure. 
tended that this is the only system 



158 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

ill times of prosperity to lower than to abolish it. Low 
duties on articles of general consumption, showing 
themselves in a slightly enhanced price, pass almost un- 
noticed, and usually cause far less friction and discom- 
fort than direct taxes. They are very equitable, for 
they are strictly proportioned to consumption or enjoy- 
ment ; and this system of taxation makes it easy for 
the taxpayer, according to his improving or declining 
means, to vary his taxation by varying his consumption, 
while it secures that some portion of the national bur- 
den shall be diffused over a wide area. An excellent 
writer on this subject has truly said : ' If only our fis- 
cal burdens are equitably apportioned, and so contrived 
as neither to fetter industry nor to repress enterprise, 
that mode of levying them must be the best which is 
the least unpleasant and the least felt ; ' and the same 
writer gives good ground for believing that there is 
much exaggeration, and even positive error, in the popu- 
lar notion that the cost of collecting indirect taxes is 
greater than that of collecting direct ones.^ Two 
other considerations must also be remembered. One is, 
that the remission of a direct tax is usually felt to its 
full extent by the whole body of taxpayers affected, 
while a wholly disproportionate amount of the benefit 
arising from the remission of a duty is in most cases 
intercepted by middlemen. The other is, that the re- 
mission of a direct tax is usually an unmixed benefit, 
while the remission of an indirect tax, by stimulating 
competition, often produces acute suffering to particu- 
lar classes. Thus, to give a single example, the kelp 
manufacture, on which the poorest inhabitants of the 
most barren coast-lands in Scotland and Ireland are 
largely supported, was for many years wholly depen- 



Greg's Political Problems^ p. 304. 



CH. II. EXAGGERATIONS OF FREE TRADE 159 

dent for its existence on a tax which was imposed on 
Spanish barilla. 

I do not intend by these remarks to dispute the im- 
mense advantages which England has derived from her 
Free-trade legislation. This legislation has vastly sti- 
mulated both production and consumption ; it has light- 
ened many burdens ; and in many cases the Treasury 
has derived a far greater revenue from a low duty than 
it had ever received from a high one. But the political 
evil of narrowing the basis of taxation is a real one, 
and, even in its purely economical aspects, the reaction 
against the abuses of the old fiscal system seems to have 
been carried too far. It is not probable that a single 
loaf of bread was made the cheaper by the abolition, in 
1869, of the shilling registration duty on corn, though 
that small duty at the time it was repealed by Mr. Lowe 
brought more than 900,000?. into the national ex- 
chequer, and would, probably, at the present day have 
brought in double that sum. Not one Londoner in a 
hundred even knew of the existence of the small duty 
on coal which was abolished by the London County 
Council. It had existed in one form or another for more 
than six hundred years, and was almost the oldest of our 
taxes. It furnished an income of more than 500,000?. 
a year, raised without complaint, for the purpose of 
effecting metropolitan improvements ; and there is no 
reason to believe that any human being, except a few 
rich coalowners and middlemen, derived any benefit 
from its abolition.^ 

We have a striking instance — though it was not of a 



' The facts relating to these Results in the way of Fluctu- 

eoal dues Avill be found in a re- ations and Alterations of the 

port issued by the Coal, Corn, Pi-ice of Coal in London since 

and Finance Committee of the the Abolition of the Coal Dues. 
Corporation of London, on The 



160 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. ii. 

democratic character — of the manner in which changes 
in taxation may be made use of for electioneering pur- 
poses in the conduct of Mr. Gladstone in making the 
abolition of the income-tax his election-cry at the 
general election of 1874. The circumstances of this 
election may be briefly told. Mr. Gladstone was not 
obliged to go to the country. In spite of his defeat on 
the Irish University question in the preceding year, he 
had still a considerable and unbroken majority, though 
several defeats at bye-elections showed clearly that his 
power was declining, and especially that the upper and 
middle classes, who were the payers of income-tax, 
were profoundly shaken in their allegiance to him. 
The income-tax-payers, it is true, were not even then 
an absolute majority of the electors, but they formed a 
much larger proportion than after the Reform Bill of 
1885. They included the great majority of the voters 
who could influence other voters ; and they were a 
body so large and so powerful that there was no rea- 
sonable doubt that a general movement among them 
would decide the fate of the election. The fortune of 
the ministry was tolerably certain to turn upon the 
question whether the defection in this notoriously wa- 
vering class could be arrested. 

It was under these circumstances that Mr. Gladstone, 
much to the surprise of the country, suddenly dissolved 
Parliament ; and he issued a programme to his electors 
which, if the report of those who are likely to be best 
informed is not wholly erroneous, was as much a sur- 
prise to most of his colleagues as to the public. The 
times were very prosperous, and a great surplus was 
gathering in the Exchequer. Mr. Gladstone, throw- 
ing all other political questions into the background, 
resolved to utilise this surplus for election purposes, 
and to stake his chances at the election upon large di- 



CH. II. THE ELECTION" OF 1874 161 

rect offers of financial relief made to the electors^ but 
especially to that cjass of the electors who were known 
to be wavering in their allegiance. One portion of his 
election address consisted of a general and undefined 
promise to reduce duties and assist rates ; but the part 
which at once and especially riveted the attention of 
the country by its conspicuous novelty and boldness 
was a definite pledge that if he won the election he 
would abolish the income-tax. This promise at once 
became the leading feature of the election. It was 
urged from a hundred Liberal platforms and in a hun- 
dred Liberal newspapers as the great reason why the 
income-tax-payers should support the ministry. Every 
elector of this class, as he went to the poll, was clearly 
informed that he had a direct personal money interest 
in the triumph of the Government. 

It is true that the promise of Mr. Gladstone was 
qualified by the following vague passage in his election 
address : ' I have said nothing to preclude the Go- 
vernment from asking Parliament to consider, in con- 
junction with these great remissions, what moderate 
assistance could be had from judicious adjustments 
of existing taxes. ^ It is true also, that in a later 
speech, being pressed with the impossibility of repeal- 
ing the income-tax without imposing other taxation, 
he admitted that, in consideration of the repeal of the 
income-tax and the reduction of rates, 'property ought 
in some shape and to some considerable and equitable 
extent to make some fair contribution towards the 
public burdens." But the nature and magnitude of 
this contribution, the form it was to take, and the area 
over which it was to be distributed, were never revealed 
up to the day of the election. Everything relating to 
it was left perfectly vague and shadowy. One point 
only was brought before the electors in clear, vivid, 

VOL. I. 11 



162 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

unmistakable relief. It was^ that if Mr. Gladstone 
won the day the income-tax would cease. Such a 
promise^ unaccompanied by any distinct statement of 
equivalent burdens to be imposed, could only have 
operated as a direct bribe addressed to that great 
section of the electorate whose growing alienation from 
the Government was the chief cause of the dissolution. 
No politician, I believe, seriously doubted that when 
Mr. Gladstone j)laced the abolition of the income-tax 
in the forefront of the battle, his object was to win the 
income-tax-payers to his side. 

Some strictures that I ventured to make on this trans- 
action in a former book elicited from Mr. Gladstone 
two articles of indignant defence.^ No one who judged 
solely from those skilful and plausible pages would im- 
agine that any question of winning votes, or arresting 
a political defection, or gaining a party triumph, could 
have entered even distantly into his calculations. He 
was merely, he said, ' consulting ' the nation ' upon 
the exercise of its chief and primary right of giving or 
withholding taxes ; ' upon ' a great subject of financial 
readjustment.^ ^ The rights of the people," as he truly 
said, ' in respect to taxation are older, higher, clearer 
than in respect to any other subject of government.' 
He at the same time asserted that his censor ' ought to 
have known, and to have stated, that with the propo- 
sal to repeal the income-tax came a proposal to recon- 
struct and enlarge the death duties. Direct taxation 
of a kind most vexations to trade and industry was to 
be removed — direct taxation, the least of all unfavour- 
able to trade and industry, . . . was to be imposed. ' 

The assertion so confidently made in this passage 
was simply untrue, and is a curious instance of the 

' Nineteenth Century^ June and August 1887. A brief article of 
my own will be found in the July number. 



CH. II, THE ELECTION OF 1874 163 

lapse of memory into which, by too hasty writing, its 
author has sometimes been betrayed. No proposal of 
this kind was made. Mr. Gladstone was obliged in his 
second article to confess that on this point his memory 
had betrayed him, and that his critic was right ; but 
he at once changed his ground, and argued that it 
would have been exceedingly prejudicial to the public 
service if he had disclosed at the election the ' readjust- 
ment ' of taxation which he had contemplated, as such 
a disclosure would have enabled the taxpayer to evade 
the coming burden. ' The disclosure of the particu- 
lars of the plan would have been both wholly novel and 
in the highest degree mischievous to the public in- 
terest.^ It is, surely, sufficiently obvious to reply that 
this fact is a very conclusive argument against the 
propriety of throwing such a matter into an election 
programme. ' The ancient right ' of the people to be 
consulted on adjustments of taxation can hardly be very 
valuable when the condition of the consultation is that 
the nature of the adjustment should be concealed. 
Stated fully to the electors, Mr. Gladstone's proposal 
would, according to his own showing, have defeated 
itself. Stated as it was stated, it amounted to little 
more than a naked promise, that if a certain class of 
voters would maintain the Government in power, they 
should be freed from a burdensome tax. 

But Mr. Gladstone takes a much higher ground than 
that of mere apology, and assures us that his real motive 
in this transaction was ' the fulfilment of a solemn duty.' 
He considered the income-tax unjust, unequal, and de- 
nioralising ; twenty-one years before he had formed 
part of a ministry which promised to abolish it. This 
pledge, after a long slumber, revived in its full vitality 
at the eve of the election, and he offered the electors 
' the payment of a debt of honour. ' 



164 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

I have little doubt that Mr. Gladstone succeeded iu 
persuading himself that this mode of reasoning was 
legitimate^ but the answer to it is very sim^^le. It was 
perfectly open to him to have introduced into Parlia- 
ment a Budget abolishing the income-tax and carrying 
out, after full exposition and discussion, such other 
financial arrangements as he deemed desirable. Had 
he pursued this usual and regular course, no shadow of 
blame or discredit could hav-e been attached to him, 
and he would, very probably, have rendered a real ser- 
vice to the country. But it was a wholly different 
thing to throw a half-disclosed and fragmentary Bud- 
get before the constituencies at a general election, 
making the simple abolition of a specific tax the main 
ground for asking the votes of those who paid it. A 
Minister who, seeing the jDopularity of his Government 
visibly declining, determined to dissolve Parliament 
before introducing his Budget, and to make his elec- 
tion-cry a promise to abolish the chief direct tax paid 
by a great wavering body of electors, may have been 
actuated by no other object than 'the fulfilment of a 
solemn duty.^ But in ordinary men such conduct would 
imply other motives ; and such men undoubtedly co- 
operated with Mr. Gladstone in the struggle, and such 
men will, for their own purposes, follow his example. 
In my opinion, few worse examples could have been 
given, and the constituencies in defeating Mr. Glad- 
stone at this election rendered no small service to 
political morality. 

Another argument of a curiously ingenious and 
characteristic nature must be noticed. I had said that 
the meaning of Mr. Gladstone's address was, that if he 
won tlie day the income-tax would cease. The state- 
ment is literally and incontestably true ; but Mr. Glad- 
stone very dexterously met it by declaring that it is an 



CH. 11. THE ELECTION OF 1874 165 

entire misrepresentation and an evidence of extreme 
ignorance to describe the election as if it was fought on 
the issue of the income-tax. It was not a question of 
one party supporting and the other opposing the abo- 
lition. ' This supposed historical fact is a pure histori- 
cal fiction.^ Both parties promised the abolition, and 
both parties, therefore, stood on the same footing. 

A few words of explanation will, I think, place this 
matter in its true light. When Mr. Gladstone issued 
his election address, Mr. Disraeli was evidently taken 
by surprise. He was much alarmed lest this novel and 
unprecedented course might produce a great wave of 
popularity, and sweep the main body of income-tax- 
payers into his rivaVs net. He, accordingly, promptly 
replied that he also was in favour of the abolition of 
the income-tax, and had always been opposed to it. 
This implied promise was thought by many good 
judges at the time to have been an exceedingly im- 
proper one ; and I am in no way bound to defend it, 
though it is but justice to add that Mr. Disraeli stated 
that he was only in favour of the abolition in case the 
surplus was sufficiently large to make it possible with- 
out the imposition of fresh taxation, ^ But surely it is 
mere sophistry to argue that the conduct of Mr. Dis- 
raeli affects the character of Mr. Gladstone's original 
address. Is it not perfectly notorious that the popu- 
larity which Mr. Gladstone's promise was expected to 
produce in this great wavering portion of the constitu- 
encies was the element of success on which his follow- 
ers most confidently relied ? Did they not, after Mr. 
Disraeli's reply, still urge (and with much reason) the 
special claim which Mr. Gladstone had established on 
the voters by forcing the question into the van, and 

^ Annual Register, 1874, p. 9. 



166 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

also that he was much more competent than his rival 
to carry the proposal into effect ? Is the fact that Mr. 
Gladstone's example was so speedily followed a proof 
that it was not pernicious, and was not likely to be 
contagious ? 

A much more serious argument is, that among the 
questions that have at different times been brought, 
with general consent, before the constituencies there 
have been many, such as the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
or local taxation, or economical reform, in which a 
private pecuniary interest, as well as a public interest, 
must have been presented to the elector. The state- 
ment is perfectly true, and I have no wish to dispute 
or evade its force. Public and private interest are, 
undoubtedly, often so blended in politics that it is not 
possible wholly to disentangle them. The difference 
between an election which is mainly governed by low 
motives of private interest, and an election which is 
mainly governed by high motives of public spirit, is 
very great, but it is essentially a difference of propor- 
tion and degree. All that can be said is, that it will 
depend largely on a minister to determine at an elec- 
tion which of these classes of motives preponderate. 
Each dubious case must be judged by the common 
sense of the community on its own merits, and in the 
light of its own special circumstances. In former 
days, private interest was chiefly brought to bear upon 
elections by the process of corruption applied to indi- 
vidual voters. In modern days, bribery has changed 
its character, and is much more likely to be applied to 
classes than to individuals. Manipulations of taxation, 
and other legislative offers dexterously adapted to 
catch in critical times the votes of particular sections 
of the electorate, are the evils which are chiefly to be 
feared, and, of this kind of evil, the course adopted by 



CH. II. THE IRISH LAND QUESTION 167 

Mr. G-ladstone in 1874 still appears to me to have been 
a conspicuous example. 

Many other illustrations might be given. No one 
who has carefully followed Irish politics during the 
period of the Land League agitation can doubt that 
appeals to the cupidity of electors formed the main- 
spring of the whole machine. Other motives and ele- 
ments, no doubt, entered largely into the calculations 
of the leaders ; and with them a desire to drive the 
landlord from his property was not in itself an end, 
but rather a means of obtaining political ascendency 
and separation from England. But it is notorious 
that the effectual inducement they held out to the 
great body of the farming class to support them was 
the persuasion that it was possible by the use of po- 
litical means to break contracts, lower rents, and 
confiscate property. Nor can it be denied that the 
legislation of the Imperial Parliament has gone a long 
way to justify their prevision. 

I do not include in this charge the Land Act of 
1870, which appears to me to have been, in its main 
lines, though not in all its parts, a wise and compre- 
hensive effort to deal with one of the most difficult and 
complicated questions that have appeared in English 
politics. The elements of the problem were very 
numerous. There was the imperfect sympathy be- 
tween the land-owning and land-cultivating classes, 
arising originally from historical causes, from differ- 
ences of religion, politics, and, in some degree, of race, 
and in modern times strengthened by the Famine and 
the Encumbered Estates Act, which created a multi- 
tude of new landlords, largely drawn from the trading 
classes, who had no knowledge of the traditions and 
customs of the estates they acquired, and who often 
purchased with borrowed money and as a commercial 



168 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

investment. Improvements^ too^ in Ireland were for 
the most part made by the tenant^ and not by the land- 
lord ; and although the rents were in general propor- 
tionately lower than in England^ although on most old 
estates a long tenure at low rents amply compensated 
the tenant for his outlay, there were, undoubtedly, 
cases where the advent of a new proprietor, or a sudden 
rise in rents or depreciation in values, led to a virtual 
confiscation of tenants'* improvements. Leases had 
been for some years diminishing, and tenancies at will 
became general. The custom of tenant-right was gen- 
eral in Ulster and occasional in other provinces, though 
it subsisted without the smallest sanction or protection 
of the law. Usage unsanctioned by law played a large 
part in Irish agrarian life ; and there was a bad cus- 
tom of allowing rents to be paid, in many parts of the 
country, with extreme irregularity, according to the 
good or bad seasons, and leaving the arrears of many 
years outstanding, not claimed, and not wiped away. 
It must be added, that the small number of manufac- 
tures had thrown the population, to an unhealthy 
extent, for subsistence on the soil ; that political agita- 
tion had already done much to inflame class animosi- 
ties and accentuate class divisions, and that there were 
grave faults on both sides. Wretched farming ; thrift- 
less, extravagant, unbusinesslike habits in all classes ; 
a great want of enterprise and steady industry ; much 
neglect of duty, and occasional, though not, I think, 
frequent, acts of oppression and extortion, all contri- 
buted to complicate the task of the legislator. 

In my own opinion, it should have been his object to 
secure to the tenants compensation for all future im- 
provements ; to bring back by special inducements a 
land system resting on definite written contracts ; to 
give legal character to tenant-right Avhen it was gener- 



CH. II. TENANTS' IMPROVEMENTS. 169 

ally acknowledged ; and to assist by Government 
measures in the formation of a peasant proprietary, or, 
what was politically scarcely less valuable, of a class of 
tenants holding land for ever at a low fixed rent. 

The question of tenants^ improvements especially 
was of vital importance, and it is one of the most real 
of Irish grievances that Parliament, in spite of the 
clearest warnings, so long neglected to attend to it. 

Some years before the Famine Sharman Crawford 
had devoted himself with much zeal to the subject, 
and had repeatedly brought into the House of Com- 
mons a Bill which would have effectually met it. 
He proposed that when a tenant made improvements 
which were of a nature to produce an increased rent, 
and which had not been included in the terms of his 
existing lease, these improvements should be duly va- 
lued ; that the tenant, at tlie expiry of his term, should 
have the right to claim either immediate money com- 
pensation from the landlord or a prolongation of his 
tenancy ; and that, in fixing the new rent, the value of 
the unremunerated improvements should be taken into 
account, so that the tenant might be repaid for them 
in the course of the succeeding tenancy.^ 

The Devon Commissioners, who sat under a com- 
mission ordered at the end of 1843, collected a great 
deal of valuable information on the subject, and treated 
it in an eminently judicial spirit. They acknowledged 
that ' there had not been brought many cases to show 
that it had been the practice of land-proprietors to 
take advantage of improving tenants who had in- 
vested money without a lease or other security.' They 
acknowledged also, that ' it had not been shown that 



^See the Digest of the Evidence of the Devon Commission^ pt. i. 
164-66. 



170 DEMiOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

tenants possessing long and beneficial leases of the 
lands had in general bronght them to a high state of 
improvement;' that, in fact, there was evidence ^that 
lands let npon very long terms, and at very low rents, 
were in a worse condition, and their occupiers even 
more embarrassed, than others/ On the other hand, 
they urged that cases of the confiscation of tenants' 
improvements had occurred ; that a tenant at will or a 
tenant with a very short lease was always liable to 
them ; that ' a single instance occurring in a large dis- 
trict would naturally paralyse exertion to an incalcula- 
ble extent ; ' that the possibility and extreme facility of 
such confiscation in the existing state of the law was a 
gross injustice to the tenant, discouraged in the most 
powerful manner a kind of investment which was na- 
turally very profitable both to the tenant class and to 
agriculture in general, and directly or indirectly con- 
tributed largely to most of the social evils of Ireland. 
They recommended, as of the highest importance to 
Ireland, a law giving tenants in the future compensa- 
tion for permanent and productive improvements, and 
framed upon the following principles. Agreements 
between landlord and tenant relative to such improve- 
ments were to be duly registered, and, in cases where 
it was found impossible to arrive at such agreement, 
a tenant was to serve a notice on the landlord of his 
intention to make suitable improvements. Mutually 
chosen arbitrators were to report upon them, and the 
assistant barrister, after such report, and after exami- 
nation, was to certify the maximum cost, not exceed- 
ing three years' rent. If the tenant was ejected, or if 
his rent was raised within thirty years, the landlord 
was to pay such a sum, not exceeding the maximum 
fixed, as the work shall be then valued at. The im- 
provements were to be completed within a limited time. 



CH. II. THE LAND ACT OF 1860 171 

and the landlord was to have the option of making 
them himself, charging 5 per cent, on the outlay.^ 

A Government measure based on this report was in- 
troduced by Lord Stanley, in a speech of great power, 
in 1845, and by Lord Lincoln in 1846. In the first 
case it was abandoned in the face of very determined 
opposition. In the second, it fell through on account 
of the overthrow of the Government of Sir Eobert 
Peel, which had introduced it. Several attempts in 
the same direction were made in the following years, 
the most remarkable being the Bill of Mr. Napier, the 
Irish Attorney-General of Lord Derby^s Government, in 
1852, which had a retrospective character applying to 
all past improvements. 'None of these measures, how- 
ever, ultimately succeeded, and the advice of the Devon 
Commission was neglected. 

Besides the question of improvements, it was clearly 
recognised that something must be done to prevent the 
too frequent evictions, or threatened evictions, and the 
Land Act of 1860 did something in this direction. 
This Act, which was passed by a Liberal Government, 
affirmed in the clearest terms that the relations of land- 
lord and tenant in Ireland rested solely ^ on the express 
or implied contract of the parties, and not upon tenure 
or service ; ' but it at the same time provided that the 
landlord could bring no ejectment for non-payment of 
rent till a yearns rent under the contract of tenancy 
was in arrear ; and that, even after the ejectment had 
taken place, and the landlord was in possession of the 
farm, the tenant might apply to the court for his rein- 
statement if, within six months after his ejection, he 
paid his rent and costs. A clause which appears to 



^Digest of the Evidence of the Devon Commission^ pt. ii. 1124- 
1125. 



172 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

have been imitated from the French Civil Code ^ au- 
thorised the tenant to remove ' all personal chattels^ 
engines, machinery, and buildings accessorial thereto 
affixed to the freehold by the tenant at his own ex- 
pense/ provided this could be done without injuring 
the freehold as it existed when he first received it ; and 
another clause established the right of the tenant to 
cut turf, in the absence of any express agreement 
to the contrary, on any unreclaimed turf bog on his 
tenancy. It may be added, that Acts of the old Irish 
Parliament had long since given the leaseholder a right 
of property in the trees he had planted, provided they 
were duly registered. 

The very comprehensive and elaborate Act of 1870 
went much further, and it was inspired by an evident 
desire to do justice to all parties ; though, in the vast 
range of its provisions, there were some which have 
proved prolific in dangerous consequences not, I believe, 
clearly foreseen by its authors. One valuable portion 
of the Act followed and extended the policy, which had 
been adopted in the Church Act, of endeavouring to 
create a peasant proprietary. It authorised advances 
not exceeding two-thirds of the purchase money, and 
repayable by an annuity of 5 per cent, in thirty-five 
years, to any tenant who desired to purchase his hold- 
ing. Another portion recognised, in the largest and 
fullest terms, the right of the tenant to compensation 
for his improvements, which are defined as works add- 
ing to the letting value of the holding, and suitable to 
it, and also to his crops and his unexhausted manure. 
This right was not destroyed by an ejection for non- 
payment of rent. It was not confined to improvements 
made subsequent to the Act. With certain clearly 



See Richey on The Irish Land Laws^ pp. 50-51. 



CH. II. THE LAND ACT OF 1870 173 

defined exceptions, it applied to all improvements made 
by tlie tenant or his predecessors in title. In the case 
01 permanent buildings and reclamation of waste land 
there was no limit of time. In the case of other im- 
provements there was a limit of twenty years. It was 
enacted that improvements, except in certain specified 
instances, should be deemed to have been made by 
the tenant or his predecessors, unless the contrary had 
been proved, thus reversing the old legal presumption 
that whatever is added to the soil belongs to tlie land- 
lord. Durable and written contracts and tenant-right 
were encouraged by clauses limiting the improvements 
for which a landlord was liable whenever he granted a 
long lease, and permitting a departing tenant to dis- 
pose of the interests of his improvements to an incom- 
ing tenant on terms that were approved of by the 
court. 

The Ulster tenant-right — or, in other words, the 
right of a tenant to sell his interest in his farm — re- 
ceived the force of law, and it was extended to all parts 
of Ireland. In Ulster the existing tenants had pur- 
chased their tenant-right, and they only obtained legal 
security for what was ah'eady theirs by usage. In the 
other parts of Ireland a saleable property which they 
had not bought was conferred upon them. One conse- 
quence of this was, that the boon was a much greater 
one to the first generation of tenants, who received it 
as a gift, than it was likely to be to their successors, 
who would in due course purchase their tenant-right. 
Another consequence, which was probably not foreseen, 
was that the tenants borrowed largely on their new se- 
curity ; and it was from this time that the ' gombeen 
man,' or local usurer, obtained his great prominence in 
Irish life. A provision, to which, I believe, there was 
then no parallel in the legislation of the world, provid- 



174 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. ii. 

ed that a tenant who had accepted a tenancy from year 
to year could not be removed^ except at a ruinous cost, 
at the date at which his tenancy was terminable. Ex- 
cept in case of non-payment of rent, bankruptcy, or 
violation of specified conditions of tenancy, the land- 
lord had no power of resuming possession of his land 
without paying the tenant a fine for '^disturbance/ 
which might, in some cases, amount to seven years^ 
rent. It will he observed that this ' disturbance ' was 
not an illegal act. It was simply the enforcement by 
the landlord of a plain and incontestable right secured 
to him by the contract under which he freely parted 
from his land. As Judge Longfield has observed, it 
was possible for a landlord under this law to put a ten- 
ant in possession as tenant from year to year, to leave 
him in tlie enjoyment of it for five years, and then to 
be obliged to pay him seven years' rent as a fine for 
removing him from it.^ This compensation was quite 
distinct from that given for improvements in the shape 
of permanent buildings or reclamation of the soil. A 
landlord might, however, free himself from this claim 
by giving a long lease. 

The statesman who introduced the Act very clearly 
stated that it was not intended to give the tenant at 
will a proprietary right in his holding, but the provi- 
sions relating to disturbance jolainly and unquestion- 
ably had this effect. Some faint and distant analogy 
maybe discovered between this legislation and the Eng- 
lish tenure of copyhold, which grew out of tenancies 
at Avill that had existed undisturbed in the same fa- 
milies for many generations, and which the law at last 
recognised as a permanent tenure, to be enjoyed by the 
tenants and their heirs, subject to the conditions pre- 



Systems of Land Tenure (Cobden Club), p. 78. 



CH. II. THE LAND ACT OF 1870 175 

scribed by immemorial custom in the manor. The 
Irish law, however, applied to the newest as well as to 
the oldest tenancies. It was defended, partly on the 
ground that usage in most parts of Ireland made a 
yearly tenant secure that he would continue undis- 
turbed in his tenancy as long as he paid his rent ; 
partly as a measure intended to discourage the great 
political evil of unnecessary evictions ; partly on the 
ground that it was likely to be beneficial to both land- 
lord and tenant, by giving the tenant strong additional 
reasons for punctually observing the conditions of his 
tenancy. It was said that it merely gave the tenant 
of a bad landlord the security which the tenant of a 
good landlord already enjoyed, and that, in the case of 
small farmers, an increased stability of tenure would 
be not only a great political advantage, but also a great 
incentive to better agriculture. Even eviction for non- 
payment of rent might be deemed a ^ disturbance ' es- 
tablishing a claim for compensation if, in the opinion 
of the Land Court, the rent was an exorbitant one, or 
if the arrears that were demanded had not wholly ac- 
crued within the previous three years. The right of 
compensation for disturbance applied to all tenancies 
from year to year, or held on leases for less than thirty- 
one years created after the Act had passed, and also to 
all tenancies from year to year existing when the Act 
was passed which were under the value of lOOZ. a year. 
The Legislature considered, with some reason, that 
the smaller tenants were too poor to make their own 
bargains. Agreements between landlord and tenant, 
under which the latter gave up their rights to certain 
privileges granted by the Act, were in a large number 
of cases made null and void. These clauses prohibiting 
grown-up men from making their own bargains have 
been the fruitful parents of much later legislation. 



176 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ir. 

The jH'inciple passed into England in the Cxround 
Game Act of 1880, which made it impossible for an 
English tenant to divest himself by agreement with the 
landlord of the right of killing hares and rabbits ; and 
a tendency to introduce the same princij^le of compul- 
sion into the largest possible number of contracts 
relating to land and trade seems fast becoming a dis- 
tinctive feature of advanced English Liberalism. 

Tlie Irish Land Act of 1870, in its consequences, was 
certainly one of the most important measures of the 
present century. It appears to me to have been intro- 
duced with much integrity of motive, and in many of 
its parts it proved very beneficial. The recognition of 
a tenants right to the improvements he had made ; 
the recognition of the Ulster tenant-right ; the en- 
couragement given to the substitution of written leases 
and contracts for the system of tenants at will ; the 
measures taken to create a peasant proprietary, were 
all marked with much wisdom. Capricious notices to 
quit, or notices to quit given for the mere purpose of 
accelerating the payment of rent, were discouraged by 
the imposition of a stamp duty, and there was a useful 
provision granting loans of public money for the re- 
clamation of waste land. I cannot, however, reconcile 
with the rights of property the retrospective clause 
making a landlord liable for improvements made by 
tenants at a time when no such liability was recognised 
by law, and with a clear knowledge of that fact ; and 
the clause giving a yearly tenant compensation for 
simple disturbance if he was removed at the end of the 
year seems to me essentially dishonest, and tlie germ of 
much evil that followed. It was not altogether a new 
importation into Irish politics. In 1866, Sir Colman 
O'Loughliu brouglit in a Bill for discouraging annual 
letting and precarious tenancies, and one of its clauses 



CH. II. IMPROVEMENTS AND RENTS 177 

gave compensation to a yearly tenant if he was ejected 
for any other cause than nonpayment of rent. This 
Bill was thrown out by a large majority.^ 

It is probable that the Act of 1870 would have been 
more successful if it had been less ambitious, and 
had aimed at a smaller number of objects. The diffi- 
culty, however, of the task was extremely great, and 
much allowance must be made for the statesmen who 
framed it. The two features of the old Irish land 
system which made the position of the Irish tenant 
most precarious were the general absence of leases, and 
the custom of the tenant, not the landlord, making 
most improvements. Neither of these points was, in 
most cases, a matter of much dispute between landlord 
and tenant. Those who are best acquainted with the 
conditions of Irish land before the recent legislation 
will, I believe, agree with me that the majority of 
smaller tenants preferred a yearly tenancy, which was 
rarely changed, to a definite lease, which usually in- 
volved stricter covenants, and was likely when it ex- 
pired to be followed by a revaluation and rise of rents ; 
and that they preferred making their improvements in 
their own economical, and generally slovenly, way, 
rather than have them made in the English fashion by 
the landlord, who compensates himself by adding a 
percentage to the rent. If the rent is sufficiently low, 
and the tenure sufficiently long to compensate the 
tenant for his outlay, there is nothing in this system 
that is unjust ; nor is it unjust that, after the tenant 
has been so compensated, the land should be rented ac- 
cording to its improved value. But it is easy to under- 
stand how this custom strengthened that notion of the 
joint ownership of the soil which had such a deep root 



' See Sir William Gregory's AuiohiograpJiy^ p. 243. 



178 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. ii. 

among Irish ideas. In many of tlie poorer parts of 
Ireland the cabin built by the peasant^ the clearing of 
stones, and the erecting of fences, constituted much 
the greater part of the value of the farm. These little 
farms of barren land were, indeed, essentially unsup- 
porting. They furnished the small tenant with shel- 
ter and with potatoes for his subsistence. His rent, 
which Avas usually not more than about 4/. a year, and 
very irregularly paid, was earned sometimes by fishing, 
more frequently as a migratory labourer^ and often by 
harvest- work in England or Scotland. 

In the fertile districts the conditions were different 
and very various. Probably the greater number of the 
original improvements had been made under the old 
system of very long leases at very low rents. In many 
cases the erection of certain buildings was expressly 
stipulated in the lease, and was one of the elements in 
regulating the price. A great ^^art of the cost of 
drainage which has been made under Government 
loans has been paid by the landlords, and in very many 
cases they have contributed a proportion to the cost of 
buildings ; but, as a general rule, the improvements 
were made by the tenant, under the belief that he 
would enjoy his tenancy for a sufficient time and at a 
sufficiently low rent to compensate him for them. The 
immense deterioration of Irish land through bad and 
wasteful farming forms, however, a considerable offset 
against these improvements. 

That rents in Ireland before 1870 were not in general 
extortionate, and were, indeed, much below the compe- 
tition value, is abundantly j^roved.^ It is proved by the 



' Comparisons between Irish and payment for improvements. 

and Britisli rents are apt to he Tlie foHowinu: ])assage, liow- 

very fallacious, on account of ever, from a pamphlet hy one of 

the different systems of farming the greatest modern authorities 



CH. II. IRISH RENTS 179 

fact that wherever tenant right was permitted this right 
of occupation sold for a large sum ; by the fact that 
wherever subletting was permitted the tenant almost 
invariably let the whole^ or portions of his tenancy, at 
much higher rents than he paid. It is proved by the 
evidence of men of the greatest authority on Irish 
land, such as Judge Longfield and Master Fitzgibbon, 
and by the direct testimony of the Bessborough Com- 
mission in 1881, which, after a long and careful inves- 
tigation, arrived at the conclusion that in Ireland it 
was ^unusual to exact what in England would have 
been considered as a full and fair commercial rent."^ 
It is proved by comparison with English and with 
foreign rents, and by the slow increase of Irish rents, 
as compared both with the prices of the chief articles 
of agricultural produce and with the increase of rents 
in other parts of the kingdom. Arthur Young, in his 
day, considered the rents paid in Ireland to the 



on statistics, may be given : ' Be- celiii des terres des Elandres ' 
fore the period of distress,' {^U Irlande^ le Canada^ Jersey 
writes Sir Edwin Chadwick in (1881), p. 138). 
1886, ' the rents in Ireland ap- ' See Report of the Inquiry 
peared to average 15s. an acre into the Working of the Land- 
for tillage land (it is now de- lord and Tenant Act^ 1870, p. 
clared to be on an average un- 8 ; Judge Longfield's essay, in 
der 10s.) ; in England, 23s. an the Cobden Club volume, on 
acre. In Scotland, on inferior 'Systems of Land Tenure;' 
tillage lands to those of Eng- ' Eitzgibbon's Ireland, in 1868, 
land, the rents were 40s. and pp. 268-70. Judge Longfield 
more' (Chadwick's Alternative was for many years judge of 
Remedies for Ireland^ p. 19). the Landed Estates Court, and 
On the comparison between probably the first authority on 
Irish and foreign rents I may land in Ireland. The authority 
cite M. Molinari, one of the of Master Fitzgibbon is scarcely 
most competent judges on the less, for as Master of Chan- 
Continent. His conclusion is : eery he had for many years no 
' Le taux general des rentes est less than 452 estates, Avith more 
modere; autant que j'ai pu en than 18,000 tenants and a rental 
juger, il est a qualite egale de of more than 330,000/., under 
terrain, de moitie plus bas que his jurisdiction. 



180 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

owner of land unduly, and often absurdly, low ; and in 
bringing in the Land Bill of 1870, Mr. Gladstone 
stated that, in the ninety years that had elapsed since 
Arthur Young wrote, the rents of Ireland had just 
doubled, and, if Ulster were excluded, had much less 
than doubled, while in ninety-eight years the rental of 
England had trebled, and in ninety-nine years the 
rental of Scotland had sextupled.^ If we take a shorter 
period, and a period of great prosperity, we shall come 
to much the same conclusion. Mr. Caird, who is one 
of the best modern authorities on agriculture, com- 
puted that in the seven years before 1869 'the land 
rental of England has risen 7 per cent., that of Scot- 
land 8 per cent., while that of Ireland appears in the 
same time to have advanced, from its lowest point, not 
more than 5^ per cent.^ ^ Taking Ireland, indeed, as a 
whole, it is probably the portion of the United King- 
dom in which the benefit of the great rise in the price 
of agricultural produce in the third quarter of the 
nineteenth century has fallen most largely to the 
labourers and tenants, and in the smallest degree to 
the landlords.^ 

But although it is not true that Irish rents were in 
general unduly high, it is true that the position of the 
great body of the Irish tenants was utterly precarious ; 
that in three provinces of Ireland many causes had 
conspired to break down the good feeling between 



^ See Mr. Gladstone's pub- prices of the cattle and dairy 
lished speech on introducing the products which Ireland pro- 
Land Bill of 1870, pp. 26-27. duces;' and he adds: 'The 

'^ The Irish Land Qvestion^ farmer and the labourer to- 
by James Caird (18(j9), p. 15. gether have, in fact, had all 

•' Sir R. GifFen speaks of ' the the benefit of the rise in agri- 

stationariness of rents in Ire- cultural prices ' {Progress of 

land for a long period, notwith- the Wo7-knig Classes 171 the last 

Standing the great rise in the Half-century). 



CH. II. IRISH RENTS 181 

landlord and tenant which was essential to a sound 
agrarian state ; and that cases of gross oppression and 
extortion, though they were a small minority, did 
exist, and were not infrequent. Subletting, it is true, 
had much diminished, and with it the chief cause of 
extravagant rents. No fact is more clearly stamped 
upon every page of Irish agrarian history than that men 
of the farmer class have always been far harsher masters 
than men of the gentleman class ; and in these latter 
days there have been instances of tenants holding at 
very moderate rents under the landlord, and actually 
having their rents reduced by the Land Court, at the 
very time when they were themselves extorting for 
portions of the same land extreme rack rents from their 
labourers. To no spot of the globe, indeed, is the 
parable of the servant who, having been forgiven his 
debt by his own master, exacted the last penny from 
his fellow-servant, more applicable than to Ireland. 

But among rents paid to the actual owner of the soil 
two classes were often extortionate. There were small 
properties in the hands of men of narrow means, either 
of the trading or farming classes, and there were 
tracts — often extensive tracts — which had been bought 
by speculators under the Incumbered Estates Act, 
usually with borrowed money. There were cases in 
which the purchasers at once sought, by extensive 
clearances and greatly raised rents, to recoup them- 
selves for their outlay. In the sale of these estates the 
tenants had usually been unprotected by lease. The 
law under which the estates had been sold recognised 
in them no right in their improvements, and rents 
were sometimes raised, in estates which had derived 
most of their value from recent tenants^ improvements, 
in a manner that was positively fraudulent. The pur- 
chaser thought only of his legal rights. He knew 



182 DEMOCRACY A^D LIBERTY ch. ii. 

nothing and lie cared nothing about the history of his 
property.^ Sometimes^, too^ on older estates, j)articular 
farms might be found rented at a strangely higher rate 
than those around them. The explanation is, usually, 
that these rents had formerly been paid to a middle- 
man, and had not been revised when the middleman 
was removed. 

The Act of 18 TO had many merits, but it admitted, 
as I believe, a dangerous and dishonest principle. The 
Act of 1881 ap]3ears to me one of the most unquestion- 
able, and indeed extreme, violations of the rights of 
property in the whole history of English legislation. 
In order to realise its character it is only necessary to 
remember that before the legislation of Mr. Gladstone 
the ownership of hind in Ireland was, like that in 
France and in America, as absolute and undisputed as 
the ownership of a house, or a horse, or a yacht. The 
Incumbered Estates Act, and all the proceedings con- 
nected with it, brought this fact into the clearest re- 
lief. It had been the policy of the Whig Government, 
supported in its day by the loud applause of the Li- 
beral party, to place landed property in Ireland on the 
strictest commercial basis. The measure was carried 
in 1849, at a time when Ireland was reduced to the 
lowest depths of misery by the great Famine, and when 
the newly imposed poor law in many cases equalled, in 
some cases even exceeded, the whole valuation income 
of an estate, and it was pressed on by the Liberal party 
with extreme harshness, to the ruin of countless land- 
lords and creditors. 

By this Act, at a time when Irish land had sunk to 
a mere fraction of its normal value, the first incum- 



^ See some good remarks on this subject by Sir TV. Gregory, 
Autobiography, pp. 157-59. 



CH. II. THE INCUMBERED ESTATES ACT 183 

brancer of an estate, or any other creditor who believed 
that the estate would fetch a price large enough to 
meet the payment of his own demand, might force the 
estate by a summary proceeding, and before a newly 
constituted court, into the market, utterly regardless 
of the interests of the other creditors and of the owner. 
Every creditor except the petitioner who was forcing 
the sale was at liberty to bid ; and even the petitioner, 
by leave of the court (which was easily procured), 
might become the purchaser of the depreciated pro- 
perty. ^By this new process," writes a very competent 
lawyer, ' estates were sold to the amount of many mil- 
lions, during the years 1849, 1850, 1851, and 1852, for 
less than half their value, and less than half the prices 
which the same estates would bring had the sale been 
deferred till the end of 1863. Some of the most an- 
cient and respected families in the country, whose es- 
tates were not incumbered to much more than half 
their value, were sold out and beggared ; thousands 
of creditors whose demands would have been paid if 
the sales had not been accelerated were not reached, 
and lost the money which they had lent upon what was 
ample security at the time it was lent, and would again 
have become sufficient security had the property not 
been ruined by the poor law and sold in that ruined 
condition, in a glutted market, uiider an enactment 
devised for the professed purpose of improving the con- 
dition of Ireland. The law^s delay, which in ordinary 
circumstances is a grievance and a vexation, would 
have had a salutary and a just effect in those calami- 
tous times. There was no justice in exonerating the 
early incumbrancers from all participation in the ef- 
fects of the visitation which had come upon the coun- 
try, and every feeling of humanity and every principle 
of equity demanded temporary indulgence from them. 



184 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

There was cruel injustice in turning a destructive visi- 
tation of Providence into an advantage to them which 
they could not have had if the law had been left as it 
stood when they made their contracts and took their 
securities, and as it still stands in England/ ' 

This measure, however, was at that time put forward 
by the Whig party as the supreme remedy for the ills 
of Ireland. It was pushed on against all remonstrances, 
and with many insults to the broken and impoverished 
landlords, who were now fast sinking into the shades of 
night. Political economy, it was said, was vindicated, 
and with a chorus of self- congratulation the Whig 
leaders proclaimed that Irish property was at last placed 
on its true basis, that all feudal superstitions had been 
effectually exorcised, and that a new and energetic class 
of landlords would replace the old thriftless, apathetic 
landlords of the past. During the last twenty-five 
years the main object of the leaders of the Liberal 
party has been to undo the work of 1849. 

Let us now look at the Incumbered Estates Act from 
another side. The purchaser purchased from the Go- 
vernment, and at the invitation of the Government, 
the complete and absolute ownership of the estate, sub- 
ject only to the existing contracts under which it had 
been hired out to the tenants. He bought every acre 
of the land, every stone of the buildings. If there 
were improvements on the land, these improvements 
were specifically mentioned in the printed advertise- 
ments that were issued by the Land Court, and they 
were sold to the purchaser by a judge who was ap- 
pointed by the Government, and under the direct sanc- 
tion of the Im2:)erial Parliament. If the property was 
let on very easy terms ; if the leases were soon to ex- 



Fitzgibbon's Ireland in 1868, p. 208. 



CH. II. THE INCUMBERED ESTATES ACT 185 

pire ; if there was a possibility of making a considera- 
ble rise of rents, these facts were constantly put forward 
by the court as inducements to the purchaser, and they 
entered largely into the price which he gave. He was 
guaranteed the complete and absolute possession of the 
land and buildings on the termination of the tenancies 
in the schedule, the full legal right of determining the 
existing yearly tenancies. One of the special advan- 
tages attributed to the Act was, that it was perfectly 
clear that the title which it conferred was absolutely 
indisputable. It was a parliamentary title, the highest 
known to English law ; a security of the same kind 
and of the same force as that by which the fundholder 
or other Government creditor is guaranteed the interest 
of his loan. Between 1849 and 1870 more than fifty- 
two millions of pounds had been invested on this se- 
curity in the purchase of Irish land. About an eighth 
part of the soil of Ireland is said to be held under this 
parliamentary title. 

Let us now pass for a moment to the position of the 
existing landlords as it is established by the legislation 
of Mr. Gladstone. In the first place, the improvements 
which had been purchased under the Incumbered Es- 
tates Act have, by a naked act of confiscation, and 
without the smallest compensation, been taken from 
the purchaser, and are now the property of the tenant. 
A great part of what the State had sold to him, and 
what the State had guaranteed to him, is no longer his ; 
and it has ceased to be his, not by an act of honest 
purchase, but by an act of simple power. In the next 
place, his clear and indisputable right to resume pos- 
session of his land when the tenancies upon it had ex- 
pired has been taken from him. The tenant who was 
in possession when the Land Act was passed has ac- 
quired fixity of tenure. Subject to the periodical re- 



186 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

yision of rents by the Land Court, and the fulfilment 
of certain easy statutory conditions, he cannot be re- 
moved unless the landlord should purchase from him, 
by permission of the Land Court, and on conditions 
which the court prescribes, that right of resuming pos- 
session of his land which before the new Act was in- 
disputably his own. The landlord has ceased to be the 
owner. He has become merely a rent-charger. Again 
and again in the debates of 1870, when the question of 
fixity of tenure was raised, the leaders of the Liberal 
party acknowledged the very obvious truth that such a 
provision simply amounted to the transfer of the owner- 
ship of the soil from the landlord to the tenant, and 
that such a transfer could only be honestly effected by 
paying for it in money. ' By such a jDrovision/ said 
Mr. Gladstone, ' the landlord will become a pensioner 
and rent-charger upon what is now his own estate. The 
Legislature has, no doubt, the perfect right to reduce 
him to that condition, giving him proper compensation 
for any loss he may sustain in money." ' Inasmuch as 
perpetuity of tenure on the part of the occupier is vir- 
tually expropriation of the landlord, and as a mere re- 
adjustment of rent according to the price of produce 
can by no means dispose of all contingencies the future 
may produce in his favour, compensation would have 
to be paid to the landlord for the rights of which he 
would be deprived.' ^ 'I shall not go into argument 
on that subject," said Sir Eoundell Palmer when speak- 
ing of this proposal, ' because that point was exhausted 
by the Head of the Government when he spoke of fixity 
of tenure, which, in plain English, means taking away 
the pro2oerty of one man and giving it to another. My 



1 Speech of Mr. Gladstone in Proposing the Irish Bill.) Fehru- 
arxj 15, 1870 (^Murray). 



CH. II. FIXITY OF TENURE 187 

right liouourable friend said that, according to the 
principles of justice^ if we transferred ^^roperty in that 
way we must pay for it. Xo doubt we may take a 
man's property^ but in that case we must compensate 
him for it/ ^ 

These principles appear to me perfectly true, and in- 
deed self-evident ; but they did not prevent the legis- 
lators of 1881 conferring fixity of tenure on the present 
tenant without granting compensation to the landlord, 
and from that time the first principle of much reason- 
ing in Parliament about Irish land has been that it is a 
dual ownership ; that the landlord is nothing more 
than a partner, or, as it is now the fashion to say, ' a 
sleeping partner,' in a joint possession, whose interests 
in every question of dispute should be systematically 
subordinated to those of the other partner. And this 
phraseology represents with much truth the position 
which the holders of land under parliamentary or other 
title in Ireland now hold. 

In the last place, the Legislature has deprived the 
landlord of the plainest and most inseparable rights of 
ownership — the power of making contracts, offering 
his farms at the market price ; selecting his tenants ; 
prescribing the period and the terms for which he will 
let his land. A court is established vvdth an absolute 
power of deciding the amount of rent which the tenant 
is to pay, and the landlord has no option of refusing, 
or seeking another tenant. It is often argued that the 
reduction enforced by the Land Courts is, on an average, 
somewhat less than that which has taken place in Eng- 
land, and that the Irish landlord has, in consequence, 
no reason t'o complain. There is, however, a great dif- 
ference between a country which is mainly pasture and 



Hansard^ cxix. 1666. 



188 DEMOCRACY A^B LIBERTY ch. it. 

a conntry which is in a large degree wheat-growing ; 
between a country where farms are constantly thrown 
into the hands of the landlord, as no tenant will take 
them, and a country where the average price of tenant- 
right is more than ten years'* purchase of the existing 
rental. There is also a clear difference between a re- 
duction imposed by an act of mere power, and a reduc- 
tion which is the result of the free bargaining of two 
contracting parties. 

It might have been supposed that a legislature, in 
conferring this tremendous power upon a new court, 
would take great care at least to minimise its injustice 
by strictly defining the principles on which it was to act, 
and insisting that the reasons for its decisions should be 
clearly and fully given. Mr. Gladstone, however, with 
great skill, succeeded in persuading Parliament to ab- 
stain from giving any definition or any approximation 
to a definition of a fair rent, leaving this matter com- 
pletely, or almost completely, to the arbitrary and un- 
regulated action of the court. The single exception 
was a provision that no rent must be allowed for improve- 
ments made either by the tenant or by his predecessor in 
title. The one real test of the value of a thing is what 
men are prepared to give for it, and this market test was 
absolutely excluded from the valuation. Another pos- 
sible test was the long continuance of the existing rent. 
The Bessborough Commission, which laid the founda- 
tion of the Act of 1881, proposed ^ that a rent which 
was paid at any time within the last twenty years, and 
which continued for not less than ten years to be regu- 
larly paid,' should be always assumed to be a fair rent, 
unless the conditions had altered to the detriment of 
the tenant. Another proposal was, that rents should 
be deemed fair, and should be exempted from the juris- 
diction of the court, if they had not been raised during 



CH. II. THE REGULATION OF RENTS 189 

the preceding twenty years. In spite of the great and 
almost unparalleled increase of prosperity in Ireland 
during that period^ it appears that this proposal would 
have applied to no less than 4,700,000 acres of Irish 
soil.^ 

Both of these proposals, however, were rejected. 
Many rents were reduced which had been paid without 
a murmur for thirty or forty years, and in spite of clear 
evidence that the chief articles of Irish agricultural pro- 
duce had during that period largely risen, and that the 
opening of new markets and the improvement of commu- 
nications had materially added to the value of the farms. ^ 
Many rents were reduced although it was shown that, 
within the last few years, the right of occupying the 
farms at these rents had been purchased by the tenant 
at a large sum under the Act of 1870.^ The decisions 
were virtually and mainly in the hands of the sub-com- 
missioners, who were to a large extent young barristers 
and county attorneys ; many of them with scarcely any 
previous knowledge of land, or of the conditions of ag- 
riculture in the province in which they were adjudi- 
cating. They were sent to their task — or, as one of 
the ablest of them expressed himself, ^ let loose upon 
property ' — without any instructions ; ^ and they usually 
gave their decisions without assigning any reasons. It 
was clearly understood that their business was to re- 
duce, and not to regulate, rents. Their popularity or 
unpopularity depended on the amount of their reduc- 
tions, and they knew that the wildest expectations were 
excited. One of the great perplexities of the lawyers 



1 See the speech of the Right port of the Committee of the 
Hon. E. Gibson on the second House of Lords on the Land Act ^ 
reading, April 5, 1881. 1883, p. 18; see, too, p. 101. 

2 See on this subject the strik- '^ Ibid. pp. 17, 43 
ing evidence in the Third Re- * Ibid. pp. 104, 132. 



190 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

who practised before them arose from the extreme diffi- 
culty of discovering the principle or reasoning on which 
they acted. One fact, however, which was clearly shown 
was, that the artificial depreciation of land arising from 
agrarian agitation and outrage entered largely into their 
estimate.^ It would be impossible to conceive a greater 
encouragement to such agitation ; while the landlords 
were fined by the Grovernment because the Govern- 
ment had failed to discharge adequately its elementary 
duty of suppressing anarchy and securing property. A 
hasty visit to the farms was made, and rents were set- 
tled according to their present condition. In this way, 
in a country where farming was already deplorably 
backward, slovenly and wasteful farming received a 
special encouragement in the form of the greatest re- 
duction of rents. 

It is not surprising that such decisions carried with 
them little moral weight. When complaints were 
made, the ministers dilated on the indecency of ques- 
tioning ' judicial decisions ; ' as if such arbitrary pro- 
ceedings as I have described bore any real resemblance 
to the judgments of a law court, where a judge is 
guided at every step by the clearly defined provisions 
of the law, and where his task is simply to decide 
or explain its relations to the facts that are before 
him. It may be observed, too, that while competition 
for rents was extinguished by the law, and rentals 
greatly reduced, the competition for tenant-right was 
practically unrestrained, and the price of tenant-right 
rapidly rose.^ .There could be no better proof that the 

^ Third Report of the Com- tion, addressed to H. M.'s Mi- 

mittee of the House of Lords on nisters, February 8, 1888, p. 23, 

the Land Act, 1883, p. 8Q. and the reply to the RepoH of 

^ For full statistics on this the Land Acts Committee of 

subject, see the Statements of 1894, pp. 102-13. 
the Irish Landowners' Conven- 



CH. II. OPINION OF MILL 191 

reductions did not represent the real market deprecia- 
tion of value, but were in a large degree simply the 
transfer of property from one class to another. 

I have no wish to put forward any extreme or ex- 
aggerated view of the sanctity of landed property. In 
my own opinion, the Legislature has a perfect right, if 
the public welfare requires it, to take possession of all 
such property, and to sell or hire it on such terms as 
it pleases, on the single condition of giving full com- 
pensation to the owners. The recommendation of Mill, 
that Irish landlords should be altogether expropriated, 
receiving full compensation, seems to me very doubtful 
in point of policy, but in no degree objectionable in 
point of principle. Mill will certainly not be suspect- 
ed of any undue leaning towards landowners, but his 
doctrine differs little, if at all, from that which I 
am maintaining. ^ The claim of the landowners,^ he 
writes, ' is altogether subordinate to the general policy 
of the State. The principle of property gives them no 
right to the land, but only a right to compensation for 
whatever portion of their interest in the land it may be 
the policy of the State to deprive them of. To that 
their claim is indefeasible. It is due to landowners, 
and to owners of any property whatever, recognised as 
such by the State, that they should not be dispossessed 
of it without receiving its full pecuniary value, or an 
annual income equal to what they derived from it. 
. . . When the property is of a kind to which peculiar 
affections attach themselves, the compensation ought 
to exceed a bare pecuniary equivalent. . . . The Le- 
gislature, which, if it pleased, might convert the whole 
body of landlords into f undowners or pensioners, might, 
a fortiori, commute the average receipts of Irish land- 
owners into a fixed rent charge, and raise the tenants 
into proprietors, supposing always (without which 



192 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

these acts would be nothing better than robbery) that 
the full market value of the land was tendered to the 
landlords in case they preferred. that to accepting the 
conditions proposed/ ^ 

I should myself state the claims of the landlord in 
somewhat different terms. As much land in these 
islands is held in trust, it seems to me that the Govern- 
ment, if it deprives the landlord, for purposes of pub- 
lic policy, of the whole or a portion of his property, 
is bound in equity to compensate him by such a sum as 
would produce, if invested in a trust fund, an income 
equal to that of which he was deprived. 

The course which was pursued by the British Le- 
gislature towards Irish land was different, and if the 
terms ' honesty ' and ' dishonesty ' apply to the acts of 
Parliaments or Governments as truly as to individuals, 
it was distinctly and grossly dishonest. Under the 
Constitution of the United States, the greater part of 
this legislation, being a direct violation of contract, 
would have been beyond the competence of Congress. 
Nor is there, I believe, anything in the legislation of 
the great European countries that is parallel to it. It 
has been described by one of the best continental 
writers upon government as an attack on the principle 
of property more radical than any measure of the 
French Ee volution, or even of the Reign of Terror. ^ It 



' Political Economy^ Book ii. on ne peutguere aller plus loin' 

chap. ii. § 0. (Laveleye, Le Gouvernement et 

'''Les lois agraires que M. la Democratie^ i. 31-32). M. 

Gladstone a fait voter pour I'lr- Leon Say cites recent Irish agra- 

lande et que Ton trouve deja in- rian legislation as the most strik- 

suffisantes portent an principe ing modern instance of State 

de la propriete et du libre con- Socialism {Socialisme d'Etat^ 

trat une atteinte plus radicale p- 7) See, too, the remarks of 

que ne I'ont fait la revolution M. Stocquart, Revue de Droit 

fran^aise et meme la Terreur. International^ xxvii. 145. 
... A moins de confiscation 



cir. II. ANTICIPATIONS OF MINISTERS 193 

is^ indeed^ much less like ordinary legislation than like 
extraordinary legislation of the nature of Acts of at- 
tainder or confiscation. There is, it is true, one ma- 
terial difference. Acts of attainder are usually passed 
for the purpose of confiscating the property of men 
who have been guilty of treason or rebellion. As the 
Parnell Commission abundantly showed, the true crime 
of the Irish landlords was their loyalty. It was for 
the avowed purpose of ruining and driving from the 
country ' the English garrison ' that the Fenian party 
organised the agrarian agitation that led to the legisla- 
tion of 1881. 

The Bill was defended by some very serious states- 
men on the ground of necessity. A gigantic agrarian 
conspiracy, including the bulk of the Irish peasantry, 
the great transfer of political power that had taken 
place in Ireland under English legislation, and an 
acute and protracted agricultural crisis, produced by 
bad seasons and wretched prices, had, they said, brought 
Ireland into a state in which some such measure was 
inevitable. It must be added that its character and 
effects were much misunderstood. It was believed 
that the free sale clause, which enabled a tenant who 
was in difficulties to sell his tenant-right to a solvent 
farmer, and, after paying all debts, to emigrate or set 
up business with a substantial capital, would operate 
to the great advantage of all parties. It would, it was 
thought, give the broken tenant a new start, secure 
the rent of the landlord, put an end to all necessity 
for evictions, and at the same time attract farmers of 
energy and industry ; and it was not foreseen how 
completely it could be paralysed by violence and intimi- 
dation. 

It is also tolerably certain that a considerable num- 
ber, at least, of the most important ministers never 

VOL. I. 13 



194 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

anticipated that the provisions for settling rents by the 
authority of the court would be applied to the bulk of 
Irish tenancies, or made use of to create a new level of 
rental. It would;, they believed, simply reduce to the 
general average those exceptional and extortionate 
rents wdiich, in every county, undoubtedly existed. 
If it had not been for the assurances to this effect 
given by the ministers, it is very improbable that the 
Bill would have passed. ' My view,^ said Mr. Bright, 
' is, that in reality the rents in Ireland will for the 
most part, in nine cases out of ten, be fixed very much 
as they are now.^^ ^The Government,^ said the At- 
torney-General for Ireland, ' did not admit that there 
w^ould be any loss to the landlord, except the loss of a 
power which he ought not to exercise.^ ^ ''I deny,^ 
said the English Chancellor, ' that it [the Bill] will, 
in any degree whatever, diminish the rights of the 
landlord, or the value of the interest he possesses.''^ 
' I think,^ said Mr. Forster, ' the final result of the 
measure within a few years will be, that the land- 
owners of Ireland, small and large, will be better off 
than they are at this moment.^ ^ It was believed that 
rents would be often raised as w^ell as often lowered, 
that the tenants who were moderately rented would, in 
consequence, abstain from going into the court, and 
that the Act would in practice apply only to a small 
number of over-rented tenancies. Lord Carlingford, 
who spoke with especial authority on all Irish ques- 
tions, and who took the chief part in carrying the 
measure through the House of Lords, was very ex- 
plicit. ' My lords,^ he said, ' I maintain that the pro- 
visions of this Bill will cause the landlords no money 



1 Hansard, cclxi. 103. ^ j]^\^^ cdxiv. 532. 

' Ibid, cclxi. 1379. * Ibid, cclxiii. 1685. 



CH. iL POLICY OP MR. GLADSTONE 195 

loss whatever. I believe that it will inflict upon them 
no loss of income, except in those cases in which a 
certain number of landlords may have imposed upon 
their tenants excessive and inequitable rents, which 
they are probably vainly trying to recover/ ^ 

I am far from presuming to fathom the true mean- 
ing or design of the statesman who is chiefly re- 
sponsible for this legislation. In introducing the Bill 
of 1870, with its dangerous principle of compensation 
for disturbance, Mr. Gladstone had specially and re- 
peatedly maintained that he was conferring a benefit 
upon the owners as well as the occupiers of the soil. 
He deplored the fact that the selling value of Irish land 
was much lower than that of British land, and pre- 
dicted that the effects of his legislation would make it 
''not merely worth twenty or twenty-five years^ pur- 
chase, but would raise it altogether, or very nearly, to 
the value of English or Scotch land.^^ In 1881 he 
used similar language. When introducing a measure 
establishing fixity of tenure he was confronted with 
his own very plain words in 1870, which I have al- 
ready quoted, about the confiscatory character of such 
a measure ; but it was not difficult for so supreme a 
master of the art of evasion to extricate himself from 
his difficulty. He skilfully met the demands for com- 
pensation for property and legal rights that were 
clearly taken away by alleging that he was not injuring, 
but, on the contrary, benefiting the landowner. In 
many cases, he said, the probable effect of the Bill 
would be to raise rents ; and although he would not 
say ' whether the action of the court in fixing a ju- 
dicial rent may not, on the whole, lower the rents 
rather than raise them in the first operation,' he was 



Hansard^ cclxiv. 252. " Ibid. cc. 1263. 



196 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

convinced that the increased value of land derived 
from the greater solidity of the social state which he 
was bringing about would speedily ' repay the landlord 
for any incidental mischief of the Act twofold or 
threefold/^ As was his usual custom on such occa- 
sions^ he pitched his tone very high^ and appealed in 
noble language to the loftiest motives. ' Justice, sir, 
is to be our guide ; and as it has been said that love is 
stronger than death, even so justice is stronger than 
popular excitement, stronger than the passions of the 
moment, stronger even than the grudges, the re- 
sentments, and the sad traditions of the past. Walk- 
ing in that light, we cannot err. Guided by that 
light — the Divine Light — we are safe.^ 

Probably no one who was present when, with uplifted 
eyes, and saintly aspect, and exquisitely modulated in- 
tonation, the great speaker poured out these sonorous 
sentences, predicted that in a few short years he would 
identify himself with the men whom he had truly de- 
scribed as preaching Hhe doctrine of public plunder ; ' 
demoralising a people by ' teaching them to make the 
property of their neighbour the objects of their cove- 
tous desire ; ^ attempting to substitute ' an anarchical 
oppression ' for the authority of law ; making rapine 
their first object ; seeking ' to march through rapine 
to the dismemberment of the Empire ; ' destroying the 
peace of life ; aiming at ' the servitude of good men, 
the impunity and supremacy of bad men.^ Few per- 
sons could have imagined that this virtuous statesman 
would soon be endeavouring to place the government 
of Ireland in the hands of those who were guilty of 
such things ; that he would be employing all the re- 



' Hansard^ cclxiii. 1696-97. of the Land Law, February 
S "e on this subject an excellent 1882. published by the Irish 
, r.nphlet, called The Working Land Committee. 



CH. II. THE ACT OF 1881 197 

sources of his matchless dialectic to attenuate their 
misdeeds ; that he would denounce as coercion mea- 
sures for the enforcement of the criminal law against 
the most merciless of oppressions^ which were largely 
copied from his own legislation ; that he would spend 
the evening of his long and brilliant public life in in- 
flaming class animosities and reviving the almost ex- 
tinct embers of provincial jealousies. It is perhaps 
somewhat less surprising that the Irish landlords con- 
tinued to be attacked just as if the Acts of 1870 and 
1881 had never been carried, and as if capricious evic- 
tions and rack-rents had not been rendered impossible. 
The Act was, indeed, as far as possible from appeas- 
ing Ireland. Probably the worst period of the land 
agitation followed its enactment, and hopes of plunder 
were excited to the utmost, while falling prices and 
ever-deepening agricultural distress vastly aggravated 
the crisis. The stability whicli was supposed to have 
been given by the Act of 1881 had been represented 
as one of its great merits ; but every year the cry for 
revising it acquired fresh force, and after the utter 
political demoralisation that followed the apostasy of 
1886, when the main section of the Liberal party pur- 
chased the votes by adopting the policy of the National 
League, this cry became probably irresistible. Some 
of those who had consented to the Act of 1881 now 
looked with consternation at their work. ' I would 
rather have cut off my hand/ said Lord Selborne, ' than 
been a party to the measure of 1881, giving the House 
the reasons and assurances which I then gave, if I had 
known that within five years after its passing it would 
have been thrown over by its authors, and that the 
course they had now taken would have been entered on.^^ 



^ Hansard^ cccxix. 18. 



198 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

The Land Act of 1887/liowever^ wliicli reopened the 
settlement;, was carried by a Unionist Government^ and 
it again lowered rents which only four or five years be- 
fore had been judicially fixed. It was said that the 
State, having undertaken to regulate rents, could not 
remain passive when prices had so greatly fallen, and 
that the political condition of the country imperatively 
demanded its intervention. It is true that, under the 
Act of 1881, the State, w^hile reducing the rents of the 
Irish landlords, had guaranteed those reduced rents for 
fifteen years.'' It was a distinct, formal promise, rest- 
ing on the national faith and on the authority of the 
Imperial Parliament. The promise was broken, but it 
was asked whether this was in truth a very different 
thing from what had already been done in 1881, when 
parliamentary and hereditary titles had been torn into 
shreds. The existing leaseholders were at the same 
time brought, for the first time, within the provisions 
of the clause for reducing rents. Mr. Gladstone 
had refused to do this in 1881 ; but it was said that it 
was intolerable that the flower of the Irish tenantry 
should alone be excluded from benefits which all other 
tenants so abundantly enjoyed, and that there was lit- 
tle chance of conciliating the Irish farmers if their 
leading and most intelligent members were left embit- 
tered by an exceptional disability. 

The force of this argument is incontestable, but the 
gravity of the step that was taken is not less so. One 
great object, as we have seen, of the Act of 1870 had 
been to induce landlords to grant leases by giving them 
an assurance that they would in this way place them- 
selves beyond the many entanglements and penal 



^ ' An alteration of judicial rent shall not take place at less in- 
tervals tlian fifteen years ' (Sect. viii.). 



CH. II. THE LAND ACT OF 1887 199 

clauses of the new legislation. ]^o one could pretend 
either that the Irish leaseholders were a helpless class^ 
incapable of making their own bargains^ or that their 
position rested on any other foundation than a distinct 
written contract. They were the most substantial and 
intelligent farmers of Ireland. The lease which regu- 
lated their tenancies was a fully recognised legal docu- 
ment, bearing the Government stamp, carrying with it 
all the authority and protection that English law could 
give. Its first clause was, usually, that at the expiry 
of the assigned term the tenant should hand back the 
land to its owner. This provision had been already 
torn to pieces by the Act of 1881, which provided that 
in cases of all leases of less than sixty years the tenant, 
at the expiry of the lease, if resident on his farm, need 
not hand it back according to his contract, but should 
remain a ' present tenant,^ with all the rights of perma- 
nent occupancy attaching to that position.^ The next 
clause stipulated in very explicit terms the rent in con- 
sideration of which the landlord had, in the exercise of 
his full legal rights, hired out his farm. This also was 
broken, and the leaseholder had now the right of bring- 
ing his landlord into a court where, as the result of 
proceedings which always brought with them heavy 
legal costs to the landlord, the rent was authoritatively 
and judicially reduced. 

It will be observed that the State did not in this 
matter annul or dissolve a legal contract, leaving the 
two parties free to make fresh arrangements. It left 



1 There was an exception in the lease of A. B., in whose 

case of bond-Jide reversionary hands it now was, this arrange- 

leases made before the law had ment was suffered to stand, 

passed ; e.g.^ if the landlord had See Kisbey On the Land Act of 

already granted to C- D. the 1881, pp. 64:-65. 
lease of a farm on the expiry of 



200 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

one party wholly bound by the terms of the contract ; 
it contented itself with releasing the other ; and, it 
need scarcely be added, it did this without granting 
the smallest compensation to the defrauded partner. 
There were other provisions, into which I need not 
enter, diminishing the few remaining powers of the 
landlord of recovering rent, and somewhat improving 
the position of the ordinary tenant. The Act was de- 
scribed by a leading Unionist statesman as ' the m^ost 
generous boon ' ever conferred by the Imperial Parlia- 
ment on the Irish tenant. This ' generosity ' which 
impels legislators, without the smallest sacrifice to 
themselves, to seek to conciliate one class by handing 
over to them the property of another is likely to be a 
growing virtue in English politics. 

We can hardly, indeed, have a better example of the 
manner in which a subversive principle, once admitted 
into politics, will grow and strengthen till it acquires 
an irresistible power. When the principle of com- 
pensation for disturbance was introduced into the mea- 
sure of 1870, it was carefully explained that this was 
not intended to invalidate in any degree the indis- 
putable title of the landlord to the sole ownership of 
his property ; that it was intended to be strictly li- 
mited in its application ; that it was essentially a mea- 
sure for the maintenance of public order ; that its only 
object was to make a few bad landlords do what all 
good landlords were already doing ; that it was certain 
to be as beneficial to the landlord as to the tenant 
class. Probably, few persons clearly foresaw that it 
was the first step of a vast transfer of property, and 
that in a few years it would become customary for 
ministers of the Crown to base all their legislation on 
the doctrine that Irish land was not an undivided 
ownership, but a simple partnership. 



CH. II. CLAIMS FOR COMPENSATION 201 

As might be expected^ the Irish landlords claimed 
compensation for property that was manifestly confis- 
cated^ for vested and reversionary interests and clearly 
recognised legal rights which, for reasons of public 
policy, had been taken away. In an eminently mode- 
rate and closely reasoned statement they showed how 
invariably and rigorously the Imperial Parliament, fol- 
lov/ing the general custom of civilised communities, 
had itself recognised this right, and imposed the obli- 
gation of compensation on all public bodies, companies, 
and individuals to whom it had granted a compulsory 
power of acquiring or interfering Avith property or 
vested interests. They suggested especially two forms 
of compensation. One of them was the reduction of 
the tithe rent-charge which was paid to the Govern- 
ment by the landlord. They strengthened their case 
by reminding the ministers that before 1872 the tithe 
rent-charge could be revised every seven years, accord- 
ing to the price of corn, which was then much higher 
than at the time they wrote ; that before 1838 the 
tithe was paid by the occupier, and not by the owner, 
and that the duty of paying it, or, as it was then said, 
collecting it, was transferred in that year to the land- 
lord, on the understanding that he could recoup him- 
self in the rent. This rent was now arbitrarily reduced, 
and the landlord had lost all power over it. 

The other suggestion was, that Government might 
lend money at low interest to pay off the heavy charges 
which rested on Irish land, and which had been incurred 
on the faith of legal rights that were now destroyed. 
Great sums had been already advanced in Ireland for 
public purposes on such terms, and it was noticed that 
this policy had very recently been adopted in Kussia 
to relieve the embarrassments of the Russian landlords. 
As the normal rate of interest on charges on Irish 



202 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

property was little^ if at all^ below 5 per cent., and as, 
with Imperial credit, State loans might be granted at 
an annuity not exceeding 3 J per cent., repaying capital 
and interest in about sixty-five and a half years, this 
measure would have very materially lightened the bur- 
den, and probably saved many landlords and many 
creditors from ruin.^ 

Such proposals, however, never had the least chance 
of being accepted. It was certain that the Liberal 
party, which now depended on the National League, 
would be steadily opposed to them, and it was quite 
powerful enough to prevent them. There was, indeed, 
a melancholy unreality about all such discussions. The 
two parties moved on different planes. Arguments of 
justice, precedents, clear statements by Liberal leaders, 
were put forward by the representatives of the Irish 
landlords, but every politician knew in his heart that 
the real question was one of votes and power, and po- 
litical power had passed away from the Irish landlords. 

It is not necessary to follow this story any further, 
and to describe the almost annual attempts that have 
been made to grant, through political pressure, to the 
occupying class in Ireland a larger share of the proper- 
ty of the nominal owners. It cannot be denied that 
this legislation has redressed some hard cases and bene- 
fited a large number of tenants ; and as few men look 
beyond immediate consequences, or rightly estimate 
those which are indirect and remote, this fact is accept- 
ed by many as its justification. For my own part, I 
believe that it will one day be found that the evils result- 
ing from this policy have greatly outweighed its bene- 
fits, and that they will fall far more heavily on another 



' Statement submitted on the part of the Irish Landowners' 
Convention to Her Majesty's ministers, February 3, 1888. 



CH. 11. EFFECTS OF THE LAND LAWS 203 

class than on the small class which was directly injured. 
In a poor country^ where increased capital^ improved 
credit, and secure industry are the greatest needs, it 
has shaken to the very basis the idea of the sanctity 
and obligation of contract ; made it almost impossible 
to borrow any considerable sum on Irish land ; effectu- 
ally stopped the influx of English gold ; paralysed or 
prevented nearly all industrial undertakings, stretching 
into a distant future. It has reacted powerfully upon 
trade, and thus contributed to impoverish the Irish 
towns, while it has withdrawn the whole rental of Ire- 
land from the improvement of the soil, as the landlord 
can have no further inducement or obligation to spend 
money on his estate. In combination also with the 
Home Rule movement it has driven much capital out 
of the land. Probably only a small portion of the 
money which is now received for the sale of land under 
the Government Acts is invested in Ireland. Prudent 
men have learned the wisdom of placing their savings, 
and at least a portion of their realised property, outside 
a country where the dominant political influences are 
on the side of dishonesty ; where the repudiation of 
debts and the intimidation of creditors have become 
leading features of popular politics ; Avhere the protec- 
tion of property and the administration of justice may 
one day fall into the hands of the authors of the ^ No 
Rent Manifesto ' and of the Plan of Campaign. 

Under such conditions, the difficulty of establishing 
any system of safe and honest self-government has been 
immensely aggravated. Ireland must indeed be greatly 
changed if the withdrawal from her country districts 
of the presence and influence of her most educated 
class proves a real benefit ; if local institutions are 
more wisely and honestly administered by passing from 
the hands of country gentlemen into the hands of the 



204 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. ii. 

professional politician ; if the labourer and smaller te- 
nant find it to their advantage to be more directly nnder 
the power of farmers^ gombeen nien^ and local attor- 
neys. Fair rents and free sale, as has been often ob- 
served, are mutually destructive, and after a few sales 
the burden of interest paid to the money-lender will be 
far heavier than the rent which was taken from the 
landlord ; while the conflict between the farmer and 
the labourer is likely to reproduce in an aggravated 
form the conflict between the landlord and the farmer. 

Three things, indeed, may be confidently asserted 
about Irish rents. The first is. that it has never been 
the custom of the great body of Irish landlords to exact 
the full competitive rents from their tenants, although 
a considerable minority have done so. The second is, 
that it has been the invariable practice of Irish tenants, 
in selling to one another their tenant-right and in sub- 
letting plots of ground to their labourers, to demand 
the full competitive price. The third is, that in order 
to make the system of what is practically rack-rent 
general, no better way could be devised than the recent 
land legislation. If you give the tenant fixity of tenure 
at a judicially fixed rent which is considerably below 
the market price, and at the same time give him a 
practically unlimited power of selling his tenancy with 
no restriction of price, the result must be two rents — 
one paid to the landlord, the other paid to the money- 
lender in the shape of interest on the money borrowed 
to purchase the tenant-right. And these two combined 
will represent the extreme value of the land. 

The moral effects on the Irish people of the land 
legislation and of the agitation tliat produced it have 
bccii still more pernicious. If we ask what are the 
chief services that a Government can render to nation- 
al morals, we shall 2)robab]y (obtain dilferent answers. 



CH. II. EFFECTS OF THE LAND LAWS 205 

Some men will place the greatest stress on the establish- 
ment by the State of the religion which they belieye 
to be true ; on the infusion into national education of 
a large measure of religious teaching ; on laws restrain- 
ing private vices or controlling trades^ institutions, or 
amusements that may produce them. On all these 
points there may be much controversy about the true 
province of the State, and there is probably much ex- 
aggeration about the good that it can do. To me, at 
least, the first and greatest service a Government can 
render to morals seems to be the maintenance of a so- 
cial organisation in which the path of duty and the 
path of interest as much as possible coincide ; in which 
honesty, industry, providence, and public spirit natu- 
rally reap their rewards, and the opposite vices their 
punishment. 'No worse lesson can be taught a nation 
than that violence, intimidation, conspiracy, and sys- 
tematic refusal to pay debts are the natural means of 
rising to political power and obtaining legislative con- 
cessions. No worse habit can be implanted in a nation 
than that of looking for prosperity to politics rather 
than to industry, and forming contracts and incurring 
debts with the belief that a turn of the political wheel 
may make it possible to cancel them. 

It is, indeed, a curious and melancholy study to trace 
the effects of recent legislation on different classes in 
Ireland. The landlords who have suffered least have 
probably been those wdio simplified their properties by 
the wholesale evictions, the harsh clearances, that too 
often followed the Famine. Next in the scale came 
those who exacted extreme rack-rents from their te- 
nants. Those rents had been received for many years, 
and though they were ultimately more reduced than 
rents which had always been low, they still, in innu- 
merable cases, remained somewhat higher than the 



206 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

others. The large class who regarded land simply as a 
source of revenue^ and^ without doing anything harsh, 
or extortionate, or unjust, took no part or interest in 
its management, have suffered very moderately. It is 
the improving landlord, who took a real interest in his 
estate, who sank large sums in draining and other pur- 
poses of improvement, who exercised a constant and 
beneficent influence over his tenants, who has suffered 
most by the legislation that reduced him to a mere 
pow^erless rent-charger, and in most cases rendered the 
sums he had expended an absolute loss. As I have al- 
ready noticed, the careless and slovenly farmer had his 
rent more reduced than the farmer who, by good culti- 
vation, had maintained his farm at its full value. An 
Arrears Act was carried conferring great benefits on 
the farmer who had allowed his rent to fall many years 
into arrear, but doing nothing for the farmer who, by 
steady, conscientious industry, had in bad times ho- 
nestly paid his way. Even the land purchase Acts, 
though they are by far the most valuable parts of re- 
cent Irish land legislation, had a similar tendency. 
As the tenant is no longer asked to advance any por- 
tion of the purchase money, no premium is given to in- 
dustry and thrift ; the value of the purchased land has 
been artificially depreciated by agitation and attacks 
upon property ; and as the landlord whose income has 
already been twice reduced by a land court knows that 
in most cases, in addition to heavy legal expenses, a sale 
will reduce each remaining 100^. a year to 60/. or 70Z., 
he is, not unnaturally, unwilling to sell when his te- 
nants are honest and solvent, though he may be ready to 
do so on easy terms when they are dishonest, trouble- 
some, and unpunctual. 

To crown the edifice, a measure was introduced by 
the Government, in 1894, for the purpose of reinstat- 



CH. II. EVICTED TENANTS 207 

ing, at the cost of 250^000?. of public money drawn 
from the funds of the Irish Cliurch, those tenants 
who^ in spite of judicial reductions and all the delays 
and indulgences of the law, had been either unable or 
unwilling to pay their rents, and had been in conse- 
quence evicted. By this measure it was proposed to 
invest three men nominated by the Government, and un- 
controlled by any right of appeal, with an arbitrary and 
almost absolute power of reinstating any Irish tenant, 
or the representative of any Irish tenant, who had been 
evicted for any cause since 18T9. The only restriction 
was that the consent of the present tenant must be ob- 
tained ; but in a great part of Ireland he could not 
withhold it without imminent danger to his life. The 
tenant might have been evicted for dishonesty, for vio- 
lence, for criminal conspiracy, for hopeless and long- 
continued bankruptcy. He might be living in America. 
The owner of the soil might have delayed the eviction 
for years after the law had empowered him to carry it 
out, and he might have at last taken the land into his 
own possession, and have been, during many years, 
farming it himself. He had no right of refusing his 
consent, and his only alternative was to take back the 
former tenant, or to sell to him the farm at whatever 
price a revolutionary and despotic tribunal might de- 
termine. 

The explanation of the measure was very plain. It 
was specially intended for the benefit of the ' Plan-of- 
campaign ' tenants, who had placed money which was 
actually in their possession, and which was due to 
their landlords for benefits already received, in the 
hands of '' trustees,' for the express purpose of de- 
frauding their creditors. This ' Plan of Campaign ' 
had been authoritatively pronounceil by the highest 
law court in Ireland to be ' clearly and absolutely ille- 



208 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. u. 

gal/ It had been condemned by the head of the Ca- 
tholic Church as distinctly immoral. It had been 
avowedly ^ a political engine/ devised by political con- 
spirators for the purpose of defeating the Government, 
proving that the Land League was stronger than the 
law, and persuading the peasantry that its directors 
were the real rulers of Ireland. The instigators of this 
conspiracy were now in Parliament. The G-overnment 
depended for their majority upon their votes, and their 
terms were that the Plan-of-Campaign conspiracy 
should be triumphantly vindicated. The proposed 
measure was not a mere measure of amnesty closing an 
old controversy, granting indulgence to poor men who 
had been duped by men far more dishonest than them- 
selves. It was a measure of triumph, giving special 
and exceptional favour to defaulting tenants. No sol- 
vent tenant could become the owner of his farm v/ith- 
out the consent of his landlord. This privilege was 
reserved for the evicted tenant. 

In the light of this clause and of the persistence 
with which it was maintained, no reasonable man could 
doubt the character, the origin, and the motive of the 
measure. The Covernment bought the Irish vote by a 
Bill to carry out their design, and it resolved to devote 
a large amount of public money to the purpose. It is 
true that tliis scandalous instance of political profligacy 
was defeated by the House of Lords, and that in the 
Land Bill of the succeeding year the compulsory clause 
was dropped ; but the fact that a British minister 
could be found to introduce, and a party majority to 
vote it, is not likely to be forgotten in Ireland. Never, 
indeed, did a minister of the Crown propose a measure 
more distinctly calculated to encourage dishonesty, and 
to persuade a deluded people that a sufficient amount 
of voting power was all that was needed to make it sue- 



CH. II. A DANGEROUS PRECEDENT 209 

cessful. It has been truly said, that the worst feature 
of the old penal code against Irish Catholics was that 
some of its provisions placed law in direct opposition 
to religion and to morals, and thus tended powerfully 
to demoralise as well as to impoverish. A system of 
government has, in our day, grown up in Ireland not 
less really and scarcely less widely demoralising. Those 
who have examined its effects will only wonder that so 
much honesty and virtue have survived it. 

It has been well said by Senior, that ^ the most re- 
volting, and perhaps the most mischievous, form of 
robbery is that in which the Government itself becomes 
an accomplice ; when the property of whole classes of 
individuals is swept away bylegislative enactments, and 
men owe their ruin to that very institution which was 
created to ensure their safety.^ ^ Probably the most 
serious aspect, however, of this Irish legislation is to be 
found in the precedents it created. I have not con- 
cealed the difficulties under which it grew up, and 
which explain and palliate the conduct of the legis- 
lators, and if a comparison were made between the 
losses English landlords have undergone through eco- 
nomical causes, and the losses of Irish landlords under 
the action of the law, it is very doubtful whether the 
position of the former would appear the more desirable. 
But, when all this is said, it is impossible reasonably to 
deny that this legislation involves as distinct instances 
of national faith violated, of property guaranteed by 
law taken without compensation, as can be found in the 
proceedings of any of those defaulting governments of 
South America on which English public opinion has 
so often and so largely expended its indignation. If 



^ Journals^ ^c, relating to Ireland^ i. 2. 
VOL. I. 14 



210 DEMOCEACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

Parliament passed a law repudiating its raihva}' guaran- 
tees, or the whole or part of the interest of the Issl- 
tional Debt, or limiting by an act of power the profits 
of tradesmen, or compelling a London lodging-house 
keeper to give fixity of tenure at a reduced rent to a 
London workman, or placing the debentures and prefe- 
rence shares of a railway on the same basis as the ordi- 
nary shares, or obliging a railway company to expend 
the whole or nearly the whole of its profits in cheapen- 
ing fares, instead of increasing dividends, it would not 
be invading the rights of property more clearly. 

It is idle to suppose that such a precedent can be 
confined to Ireland, or Irish land, or Irish landlords. 
With a suffrage that gives the predominant power to 
the very ignorant and the very poor ; in an age when 
every kind of predatory theory relating to projDerty is 
in the air, and when the province of State interference 
is continually extending, and under a Constitution 
which gives no special protection to contracts, such a 
precedent is certain to grow. A departure from sound 
principle in legislation is nearly always advocated, in 
the first instance, on the ground that it is entirely ex- 
cej)tional, strictly limited in its application, certain to 
do no practical harm, and intended to secure some 
practical benefit. Once admitted, it soon becomes a 
starting-point or logical premise, and is pushed into 
new fields and to new consequences. 

There are very few forms of confiscation which an 
ingenious man may not justify by the Irish precedent. 
Irish landlordism is far from being an exceptional 
thing, and oppressive rents and liarsh evictions will be 
found in greater abundance in the poorer quarters of 
London, Paris, or Xew York, than in Mayo and Conne- 
mara. The well-knoAvn American writer, Mr. George, 
compares Irish landlords to useless, ravenous, destruc- 



CH. II. HENRY GEORGE ON LANDLORDISM 211 

tive beasts, but he ackno^Yledges, a few pages later, that 
they are in no degree harder than any similar class ; 
that they are less grasping towards their tenants than 
the farmers who rent of them are towards the labourers 
to whom they sublet ; that it is pure ' humbug ' to pre- 
tend that ' Irish landlordism is something different 
from American landlordism ; ' and that the position of 
an American tenant is, in fact, not better, but worse, 
than that of an Irish one. ' In the United States the 
landlord has, in all its fulness, the unrestricted power 
of doing as he pleases with his own. Rack-renting is 
with us the common, almost the exclusive, form of 
renting. There is no long process to be gone through 
to secure an eviction, no serving notice upon the re- 
lieving ofl&cer of the district. The tenant v>diom the 
landlord wants to get rid of can be expelled with the 
minimum of cost and expense.^ Mr. George quotes 
with approval the statement of an American judge tliat 
there are few months in ^hich at least 100 warrants of 
ejection are not issued against poor tenants in the more 
squalid quarters of New York.^ 

In countless instances, indeed, the rents of poor 
men's houses, the value of poor men's investments, and 
the burdensomeness of poor men's contracts, are 
affected by circumstances which they could neither 
foresee nor control. How often does some great quarter 
of houses for the poor grow up in the neighbourhood 
of a flourishing industry, but a change of fashion, a 
new invention, a migration of population or capital, 
destroys the industry : work ebbs away, prices and 
wages change, contracts wliich Avere once easy and 
natural become overwhelmingly oppressive, and with 
diminishing or disappearing profits, the interest of 



* George's Social ProUems^ chap. xi. 



212 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. it. 

money borrowed to carry on tlie business ruins the 
worker. Ought the State under such circumstances to 
constitute itself a kind of Providence, to break con- 
tracts and regulate anew the conditions of industry ? 
And if it begins to do this, without giving compensa- 
tion for rights that it takes away, and under mere po- 
litical pressure, at what point is it likely to stop ? 

Reflections of this kind must have occurred to every 
thinking man who observes the course of modern 
politics, and the alacrity and complaisance with which 
schemes of the most wholesale plunder are in many 
quarters received. One favourite form has consisted 
of attacks on the private ownership of land, and the 
popularity attained by the writings of Mr. George, 
who preaches on this subject the most extreme doctrine, 
is a striking sign of the times. Nothing, indeed, in his- 
tory or in economics is more plain than that the strong 
stimulus of an exclusive personal interest can alone at- 
tract to land the labour and the capital that make it 
fully productive, and that the j^roductiveness of the 
soil is one of the first conditions of the wellbeing of 
the wdiole community. The transition from the com- 
mon ownership of land which existed when mankind 
were thinly scattered nomads and hunters, to a divided 
land cultivated and fertilised by individual industry, 
was one of the first and most valuable steps in the pro- 
gress of civilisation. Nothing also in morals is more 
plain than that to abolish without compensation that 
private ownership which has existed unquestioned for 
countless generations, and on the faith of which tens 
of thousands of men in all ages and lands, and with 
the sanction and under the guarantee of the laws of all 
nations, have invested the fruits of their industry and 
their thrift, w^ould be an act of simple, gross, naked, 
gigantic robbery. Were it not so, indeed, the words 



CH. II. THE UNEARNED INCREMENT 213 

' honesty ' and ' dishonesty ' would have no real mean- 
ing. Yet such a proposal has been warmly welcomed^ 
such a measure has been eagerly advocated, by many 
who would be very indignant if they were described as 
the accomplices of thieves, and who would probably be 
perfectly incapable in their private capacities of an act 
of dishonesty. If, on the other hand, the State simply 
purchased honestly the land of the country, and 
placed itself in the position of the landlord, it is easy 
to show that the whole transaction could only end in a 
ruinous loss. The position of the occupying tenant 
would be unchanged, except that he would pay his 
rent, not to a private individual, but to the representa- 
tive of the State. The purchase money could only be 
raised by a colossal loan, which would have to be paid 
for in the shape of interest. The returns from land are 
so small that, far from furnishing a surplus for the re- 
lief of taxation, they would, in most cases, be insuffi- 
cient to pay the simple interest of this loan, even if it 
could be raised on ordinary terms. But every compe- 
tent judge must know the utter impossibility of raising 
such a loan at the ordinary price, and without produ- 
cing a financial convulsion probably more tremendous 
than any that the world has seen.^ 

Another doctrine which, in different forms, has 
spread widely through public opinion is that of Mill 
about ^ the unearned increment.' Starting from the 
belief that the value of land has a natural tendency to 
increase through the progress of society, and without 
any exertion or sacrifice on the part of the owner, Mill 
proposed that this ' unearned increment ' should be 



' Mr. Fawcett has dealt fully State Socialism, and the Nation- 
with this aspect of the question alisation of Land (1883). 
in an admirable pamphlet called 



214 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii, 

steadily intercepted and appropriated by the State in 
the form of taxation. It was true, Mill acknowledged, 
that men had long bought land, which brings a smaller 
return than almost any other form of investment, 
through a belief that their income would gradually in- 
crease, and with an implied assurance that they would 
only be taxed in proportion to other incomes. Mill, 
however, very honestly met this objection by maintain- 
ing that the confiscation of the increment should only 
take place from the present time and with due notice, 
and that the landlord should have the alternative of 
receiving from the State the present market value, 
which includes the present value of all future expecta- 
tions. 

In the long period of agricultural depression through 
which England and most other countries have passed 
the doctrine of ' an unearned increment ' wears an 
aspect of irony. For many years the market value of 
agricultural land, instead of rising, has been steadily 
falling, and history clearly shows that the same pheno- 
menon has taken place in many long periods and in 
many great countries. If the State takes from the 
owner by excej)tional taxation the normal rise in the 
value of his land, it may very reasonably be expected 
by exceptional legislation to compensate him for its fall. 

No statement can be more palpably untrue than that 
'^ unearned increment" is a thing in any degree peculiar 
to land. The growth of population and the develop- 
ment of civilisation exercise exactly the same influence 
on the shares of a railway or a dockyard ; on the wages 
of the labourer ; on the fees of the professional man ; on 
the masterpieces of art, on the value of innumerable 
articles of commerce. In countless cases property is 
increased, or industry and ability reap larger rewards 
in consequence of changes which do not lie within 



CH. II. THE UNEARNED INCREMENT 215 

themselves, and to which they have contributed no- 
thing, but which are wholly due to extraneous and sur- 
rounding circumstances. Ask any rich man which of 
his investments, without any sacrifice or exertion on 
his part, have doubled or trebled in value, and you 
will find that in the great majority of cases they have 
no connection with land. What reason is there, there- 
fore, for selecting for exceptional and penal taxation 
the single form of property which usually produces 
the least return, and which is associated to the great- 
est degree with the discharge of duties that are emi- 
nently useful to the State ? And this proposal is 
made in a country where so large an amount of money 
has been sunk in land by many generations of pro- 
prietors that the actual rent would represent, in very 
many instances, nothing more than the lowest interest 
on the outlay ; in a country where the value of per- 
sonal property enormously exceeds that of land, and 
has been, during the last century and a half, advancing 
with a vastly greater rapidity. According to Sir 
Eobert Giffen, land in England constituted in 1690 
about 60 per cent, of the national wealth, and in 1800 
about 40 per cent. In the United Kingdom it con- 
stituted, in 1812, 44 per cent. ; in 1865, 30 per cent. ; 
in 1875, 24 per cent. ; in 1884, only 17 per cent.^ 

The true explanation of such proposals is political. 
It is to be found in that almost rabid hatred of the 
landed interest, growing out of political antagonism, 
which has characterised large bodies of English Ead- 
icals, and which, in a time when the deep agricultural 
depression forms probably our most serious national 
evil and danger, makes the increased taxation of land 
one of the most popular of Radical cries. 



Giffen's Gro'wfh of Capital^ pp. 111-12. 



216 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. ii. 

One argument^, upon which much stress has been 
put^ but which has now. in a great degree^ lost its 
force, is that the land of the country is the source of 
the food on which its people depend, and that special 
legislation ought therefore to prevent it from being in 
the uncontrolled power of the few. As I have already 
said, I believe that, if any clear case of public welfare 
can be established, the Government has the right to 
take comjilete or partial 230ssession of the land, on 
condition of compensating the owaiers. If England 
were surrounded by a brass wall, and if its people de- 
pended for their subsistence on the crops raised within 
that wall, severe restrictions should undoubtedly be 
placed on the use of great portions of the soil for parks 
or sporting purposes. But the situation is much mod- 
ified when the main supply of food for the peo23le is 
not derived from English soil, but comes from the 
United States, from the Colonies, from India, and 
from Eussia, and when this supply pours in wuth such 
abundance and at such prices that the best English 
land is almost crushed by the comjoetition, while the 
inferior lands have become, as food-producing land, 
almost useless. 

The unreality, however, of the speculation that 
would separate landed property by a sharp generic 
distinction as an object of spoliation from all other 
property speedily became apparent. The same class 
of reasoners soon found that similar or analogous ar- 
guments may be applied to other branches of property, 
and to defence of other forms of dishonesty. It is a 
significant fact that while Mr. George in his first book 
only proposed to rob the landowner, in his second book 
he proposed equally to rob the fundowner, being now 
convinced that the institution of public debts and pri- 
vate property in land rested on the same basis. In 



CH. II. NATIONAL DEBTS 217 

nearly all tlie Socialist programmes tliat are now is- 
sued on the Continent the 'nationalisation of land" is 
included, but it is always coupled with proposals for 
the nationalisation of all capital and means of produc- 
tion, and for the repudiation of national debts. 

Jefferson had already anticipated these writers in 
their advocacy of the repudiation of national debts ; 
and it must be acknowledged that the arguments for 
this course are quite as plausible as those in favour of 
land spoliation. It is said that one generation cannot 
bind another and impose on it the interest of its debts. 
We are reminded that these debts were incurred at a 
time when the masses, who now consider themselves, 
by a kind of right divine, the rulers of the State, were 
almost wholly unrepresented, and for objects of which 
they altogether disapprove. Demagogues are not want- 
ing to persuade them that the war of the American 
Kevolution and the war of the French Revolution, 
which are responsible for the greater part of the debt, 
were mere crimes of the aristocracy, and crimes di- 
rected against the people. Are the people, it is asked, 
for ever to bear the burden of debts so incurred, and 
incurred, too, when the national credit was so low that 
not more than 70/. or 60/. was paid to the Exchequer 
for bonds which now bear the value of 100/. ? 

As democracy advances, and precedents of spolia- 
tion pass into legislation, doctrines of this kind are 
likely to find an increasing number of adherents. 
This prospect renders peculiarly alarming the enor- 
mous increase of national debt that has taken place in 
Europe during the last few decades. It justifies the 
wisdom of the policy of America in paying off, even by 
very drastic measures, the bulk of its debt, and also the 
great and praiseworthy efforts that have been made by 
British Governments in the same direction. 



218 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

Mining royalties stand on the same footing as private 
property in land. They are a kind of property which 
has been for generations bought, sold, mortgaged, and 
bequeathed with the full sanction of the law, and they 
have been estimated in the British Isles at the enor- 
mous sum of eight millions a year. There is a party, 
though happily not a large one, who openly advocate 
their simple confiscation. Thus the Glasgow Trade 
Council passed a resolution, ' That this Council in- 
structs the secretary to state to tlie (Mining Royalties) 
Commission that it is in favour of mining royalties be- 
coming national property without compensation being 
given. ^ Similar views are frequently expressed in So- 
cialist literature, and they were put forward by some 
witnesses before the Labour Commission, the most con- 
spicuous upholder of this shameless dishonesty being a 
Radical member of Parliament.^ 

Another kind of property which has been the sub- 
ject of much more or less ingenious sophistry is lite- 
rary property. The right of an author to the profits of 
the book he has written rests on the highest and sim- 
plest title by which property can be held — that of 
creation. The author made it. His title to what he 
has himself created, like that of the labourer to what 
he has himself earned, is certainly more direct, if it is 
not of a higher kind, than that of any species of pro- 
perty which is simply hereditary. But the peculiarity 
of literary property is, that while it may be of great 
value to its author, and of great utility to mankind, it 
may be stolen with peculiar facility, and in a difi'erent 
way from most otber kinds of property. Like a bank- 
note, its value is destroyed if every one is allowed to 
reproduce it, and hence laws of copyright have been 



Spyers, The Lahour Question^ pp. 128-30. 



CH. II. LITERARY PROPERTY 219 

found necessary to protect it. Among all the forms of 
property^ few are so imperfectly protected as this ; but 
there are some who would abolish it altogether, refus- 
ing all legal protection to literary property. One of 
their arguments is, that an author merely gives a form 
to ideas and knowledge which are floating in the intel- 
lectual atmosphere around him, and which are the 
common property of all men, and has, therefore, no 
exclusive right to what he has written. If this be 
true — and it is far from being absolutely so — the sim- 
ple answer is, that it is to the form alone, which is his 
own work, that he claims an exclusive right. A sculp- 
tors right of property in his statue is not destroyed by 
the fact that the clay and the marble existed before he 
touched them with his chisel. An author claims no 
monopoly in his ideas ; but the form in which he 
moulds them is so essentially the main element in the 
question, that the distinction is for all practical pur- 
poses trivial. There is no idea in Gray^s Elegy which 
has not passed through thousands of minds. Gray 
alone gave them the form which is immortal. 

It is said that an author is a ' monopolist ' because he 
claims an exclusive right of selling his book, and that his 
claim is therefore opposed to the doctrine of free trade. 
But this is a pure confusion of thought. In the sense 
of political economy, a man is a mono^^olist who pre- 
vents others from pursuing a form of industry which 
they might have pursued independently of him, and 
had he not existed. He is not a monopolist if he only 
prevents them from appropriating what he alone has 
made, and what would not have existed without him. 
An author is a monopolist in no other sense than a pro- 
prietor or labourer who claims the exclusive possession 
of his own earnings or his own inheritance. If I write 
the history of a particular period, I claim no legal right 



220 DE>[OCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. ii. 

of debarring otliers from writing about the same j^eriod^ 
or using the materials that I have used. I claim onl}^ 
an exclusive right in that specific work which I have 
myself made. A fisherman would be rightly called a 
monopolist if he excluded all others from fishing in the 
sea. He is not rightly called a monopolist if he only 
claims an exclusiA'e right to dispose of the fish which 
he has himself caught in the sea^, which is open to all.'^ 

But the author, it is said, is under a special obliga- 
tion to the State because his property is protected by a 
special law. The answer is, that the very object for 
which all governments are primarily created, and for 
which all taxes are paid, is the protection of life and 
property. A government in protecting property is 
simply discharging its most elementary duty. Dif- 
ferent kinds of property may be invaded, and must 
therefore be protected in different ways ; and, as a mat- 
ter of fact, the protection of literature costs the State 
much less in labour, in money, and in popularity than 
the protection of pheasants. 

Others again contend for what they call the nationali- 
sation of the means of communication, or, in other 
words, the appropriation of the railways and all other 
public conveyances by the State. If by this term is 
meant that the Government should either construct, or 



1 Locke's remarks about land- in. it hath by this labour some- 

ed property appear to me very tiling annexed to it that excludes 

eminently applicable to copy- the common right of other men. 

right. • Whatsoever a man re- For, this labour Ijeing the un- 

moves out of the state that Na- questionable property of the la- 

ture hath provided and left it bourer, no man but he can have 

in, he hath mixed his labour a right to what that is once 

Avith, and joined to it something joined to, at least where there 

that is his own, and thereby is enough and as good left in 

makes it his property. It being common for others ' (Locke On 

by him removed from the com- Civil Government^ c. v.). 
mon state Xuture hatli ])laccd it 



CH. II. THE CLAIMS OF SOCIALISM 221 

purchase at a fair price^ the railways within its do- 
minion^ there is no objection of principle to be raised. 
The system of State railways exists in many countries. 
In judging whether it is for the advantage of the na- 
tion as a whole, we have to consider a large number of 
conflicting and closely balanced advantages and disad- 
vantages, and the preponderance in each country must 
be decided according to its own special economical cir- 
cumstances. It is also universally admitted that the 
State, having given great privileges and powers to a 
railway company, is perfectly justified in imposing upon 
it many restrictions. But when it is claimed that the 
State may, without purchase, or at a rate of compensa- 
tion below its real value, take possession of a railway, 
depriving of their property the shareholders at whose 
risk and cost it was made, it can only be answered that 
such a claim is simple and naked robbery. And the 
same thing may be confidently asserted of many other 
ambitious schemes for ' nationalising ^ all great indus- 
trial undertakings and absorbing all capital into the 
State. If the element of just purchase enters into 
these transactions, they would only result in a great 
financial catastrophe. If purchase or compensation 
be refused, the catastrophe would not be averted, but 
the process would be one of gigantic robbery. 

Such schemes for turning the State into the univer- 
sal landlord, the universal manufacturer, the universal 
shopkeeper, reorganising from its foundations the whole 
industrial system of the world, excluding from it all 
competition and all the play of individual emulation 
and ambition, can never, I believe, be even approxi- 
mately realised ; but no one who watches the growth 
of Socialist opinion in nearly all countries can doubt 
that many steps will be taken in this direction in a not 
remote future. 



222 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

The question in what degree and in what manner the 
demands that are rising may be wisely met is of the 
utmost importance. The sul3Ject is one which I pro- 
pose to discuss at some length in later chapters. Two 
things may here be said. One is, that in an over- 
crowded country like England, whose prosperity rests 
much less on great natural resources than on the con- 
tinuance of a precarious and highly artificial commer- 
cial and manufacturing supremacy, any revolution that 
may lead to a migration of capital or the destruction 
of credit is more than commonly dangerous. The 
other is, that this class of questions is eminently one in 
which consequences that are obscure, intricate, indirect, 
and remote are often, in the long run, more important 
than those which are obvious and immediate. 

Is the parliamentary system in the democratic form 
which it has of late years assumed well fitted for wisely 
dealing with these difficult and dangerous questions ? 
Let any one observe how steadily and rapidly the stable 
forces, which in old days shaped and guided the course 
of English politics, are losing their influence. Let him 
watch closely a great popular election, and observe how 
largely the cliance of a candidate depends upon his skill 
in appealing to the direct and immediate interests, or 
supposed interests, of large sections of the electorate ; 
in making use of claptrap and popular cries ; in in- 
flaming class animosities and antipathies, and pledging 
himself so far as to conciliate many distinct groups of 
faddists. Let him then observe how Parliament itself 
is breaking into small groups ; how the permanent 
forces of intelligence and property, which once enabled 
governments to pursue their paths independently of 
fluctuating or transient gusts of ignorant opinion, are 
weakened ; how large a part of legislation, especially in 
the closing period of a Parliament, is manifestly in- 



CH. II. THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE 223 

tended for mere electioneering purposes ; how very few 
public men look much beyond the interests of their 
party and the chances of an election. He must be a 
sanguine man who can look across such a scene with 
much confidence to the future. 

He will not, if he is a wise man, be reassured by the 
prevailing habit, so natural in democracies, of canonis- 
ing, and almost idolising, mere majorities, even when 
they are mainly composed of the most ignorant men, 
voting under all the misleading influences of side-issues 
and violent class or party passions. ' The voice of the 
people,' as expressed at the polls, is to many politicians 
the sum of all wisdom, the supreme test of truth or 
falsehood. It is even more than this : it is invested 
with something very like the spiritual efficacy which 
theologians have ascribed to baptism. It is supposed 
to wash away all sin. However unscrupulous, however 
dishonest, may be the acts of a party or of a statesman, 
they are considered to be justified beyond reproach if 
they have been condoned or sanctioned at a general 
election. It has sometimes happened that a politician 
has been found guilty of a grave personal offence by an 
intelligent and impartial jury, after a minute investi- 
gation of evidence, conducted with the assistance of 
highly trained advocates, and under the direction of an 
experienced judge. He afterwards finds a constituency 
which will send him to Parliament, and the newspapers 
of his party declare that his character is now clear. 
He has been absolved by ' the great voice of the people.' 
Truly indeed did Carlyle say that the superstitions to 
be feared in the present day are much less religious 
than political ; and of all the forms of idolatry I know 
none more irrational and ignoble than this blind wor- 
ship of mere numbers. 

It has led many politicians to subordinate all notions 



224 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

of right and wrong to the wishes or interests of majori- 
ties, and to act on tlie maxim that the end justifies the 
means quite as audaciously as the most extreme Jesuit 
casuists. Tliis new Jesuitism has, indeed, much real 
affinity with the old one. The root idea of the old 
Jesuitism was a strongly realised conviction that the 
Catholic Church is so emphatically the inspired teacher 
of mankind, and the representative of the Deity upon 
earth, that no act can be immoral which is performed 
in its service and is conducive to its interests. The 
root idea of the new Jesuitism is the belief that the 
moral law has no deeper foundation and no higher 
sanction than utility, and tliat the greatest happiness 
of the greatest number is its supreme test and ideal. 
From this it is easily inferred that minorities have no 
rights as against majorities. In both cases, too, the 
love of power plays a great part. The old Jesuit 
found in his doctrine a strong lever for governing the 
Church and influencing the world. The new Jesuit 
finds his doctrine peculiarly useful in a society in which 
all political power is obtained by winning tlie votes of a 
majority. Many good Catholics will maintain that the 
old Jesuit misread the teaching of the Church, and 
some of them believe that religion has had no worse 
enemy than a society which has associated the most 
sacred Name given among men with falsehood, impos- 
ture, unscrupulous tyranny, and intrigue. Many good 
utilitarians will say that the new Jesuit has calculated 
falsely the balance of utilities, and that no course of 
policy which shakes the security of property or contract, 
and the rights of minorities, can be, in its far-off re- 
sults, for the benefit of the majority. But in each 
case the inference of the Jesuit is i^lausible and natural, 
and it is an inference that is certain to be drawn. 

Some of my readers will probably consider it fanciful 



CH. II. MORAL PHILOSOPHY AND POLmCS 225 

to attribute to theories of moral philosophy any influ- 
ence over political conduct. In England^ speculative 
opinion has not usually much weight in practical poli- 
tics, and English politicians are very apt to treat it with 
complete disdain. Yet no one who has any real know- 
ledge of history can seriously doubt the influence over 
human affairs which has been exercised by the specula- 
tions of Locke, of Rousseau, of Montesquieu, of Adam 
Smith, or of Bentham. The force and the intensity 
which the doctrine of nationalities has of late years as- 
sumed throughout Europe is not unconnected with the 
new importance which speculative writers have given 
to race affinities and characteristics, and something of 
the current Radical notions about land is certainly due 
to our increased knowledge of the wide diffusion, in the 
early stages of society, of joint or communal ownersliip 
of the soil. 

So, too, I believe the views of many politicians have 
been not a little coloured by the doctrines of moral 
philosophy, which have of late years been widely popu- 
lar, which reduce our conceptions of riglit and wrong, 
of justice or injustice, to mere general utility, or a cal- 
culation of interests. Philosophy has its fanatics as 
well as religion, and to this conception of ethics may 
be largely traced the utter unscrupulousness in dealing 
with the rights of minorities which is sometimes found 
among men who are certainly not mere unprincipled 
self-seekers. In every conflict of interests between the 
few who own a thing, or have produced it, or paid for 
it, or run the risks attending it, and the many who 
wish to enjoy it, this bias may be discerned. In the 
eyes of many politicians, all differences between the 
landlord and his tenants, between the author and his 
readers, between railway-shareholders and the travelling 
public, between the producer and the consumers, are 

VOL, I. 15 



226 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

simply regarded as conflicts between the few and the 
many, and the rights of the few cease to have any bind- 
ing force if their destruction is likely to confer an im- 
mediate benefit on the many. 

Herbert Spencer has said, with profound truth and 
wisdom, that ' the end which the statesman should keep 
in view as higher than all other ends is the formation 
of character/ It is on this side that democratic poli- 
tics seem to me peculiarly weak. Let us once more 
look at the representative body. Even taking the low- 
est test, can it be confidently said that its moral level 
is what it was ? Too much stress may perhaps be 
laid on the many grave private scandals that have taken 
place among its members within the last twenty or 
thirty years. It is impossible, however, not to be struck 
by the number of cases in which members of that 
House have during this space of time been found 
guilty of acts of financial dishonesty that brought them 
within the scope of the criminal law, or of other forms 
of immorality sufficiently grave to come before the law 
courts. The House of Commons consists of 670 mem- 
bers. About the year 1892 the committee of a great 
London club containing nearly twice as many members 
had their attention called to the fact that, by a curious 
omission in their rules, no provision had been made 
for the expulsion of any member who, without breaking 
the precise rules of the club, had been guilty of any of 
those gross scandals which make men unfit for the so- 
ciety of gentlemen. The omission had been unnoticed 
because, although the club had existed since 1824, no 
such case had arisen among its members. It would be 
unreasonable to expect from a body elected under such 
stormy and contentious conditions as the House of 
Commons a standard as high as that in the Athenaeum 
Club, but surely the contrast is too great and too 



CH. II. HOUSE OF COMMONS ETHICS 227 

marked to be lightly dismissed. And if we extend our 
survey beyond England, and count up the instances of 
gross profligacy or dishonesty which have been de- 
tected, often in very high places, in the Parliaments 
of the Continent, of the United States, and of the 
Colonies, in the present generation, the evidence will 
accumulate, showing how little democratic election se- 
cures a high standard of integrity and morality. 

The House of Commons, however, as I have before 
said, is essentially a body of trustees, and it is by their 
performance of their public duty that its members must 
be chiefly judged. Is it too much to say that, in the 
opinion of the great body of educated men, there has 
been in this respect a marked decline ? I am anxious 
on this subject to avoid all exaggeration. It is not yet 
true of England, as it is of America, that the best men 
in intellect and character avoid public life, though 
there are ominous signs that this may before long be 
the case. Parliament still contains a large body of 
such men, and there have been several conspicuous 
modern instances showing how much the weight of 
character still tells in public life. Probably a large 
proportion of my readers will be of opinion that the 
year 1886 witnessed the worst act of modern English 
politics ; but it at least brought with it the consoling 
spectacle of a large body of public men, several of them 
of the highest political eminence, deliberately and with- 
out any possible selfish motive breaking old ties and 
sacrificing political ambition rather than take part in 
a disgraceful scene. But, on the whole, can any one 
doubt that apostasies have been more shameless, class 
bribes more habitual, and the tone of the House of 
Commons less high, than in the last generation ; that 
principles are more lightly held and direct party in- 
terests more habitually followed ; that measures of 



228 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

great and far-reacliing importance are more recklessly 
launched for mere electioneering purposes ; that men 
to whom, in private conversation^ not one educated 
man out of a hundred would ascribe any real sincerity 
or weight of conviction, are playing a more leading 
part in English public life ? I have elsewhere dwelt 
on the j^rofound and indelible impression made in the 
last century by the coalition between Fox and Xorth. 
These tAvo able, honourable, and in most respects pa- 
triotic, politicians, had been fiercely divided on the 
question of the American War, and Fox had used the 
strongest language against his opponent, denouncing 
him as the enemy of British freedom, and describing 
him as worthy of death upon the scaffold. The Ameri- 
can War ceased ; the controversies it produced were 
closed, and then Fox made an alliance with Xorth for 
the purpose of keeping out of office a statesman whom 
they disliked and distrusted. Xothing in the English 
parliamentary history of the eighteenth century more 
profoundly shocked the public mind and conscience 
than this transaction, and Fox, at least, never recovered 
the discredit which the coalition left upon his charac- 
ter. Yet, after all, both of these statesmen were men un- 
doubtedly devoted to the interests of the great empire 
they ruled, and after the termination of the American 
War there was no capital subject of present difference 
between them. 

Compare this transaction with the alliance which gave 
the Liberal leaders eighty-five Home Rule votes in 1886, 
and placed them in a close bond of union with the very 
men whom they had so lately denounced and imprisoned 
for treason to the Empire, and for most deliberately in- 
citing to dishonesty and crime. Those who will judge 
public men by their acts, and not by their professions, 
can have little difficulty in pointing the moral. 



CH. II. THE CHANGED CONSTITUENCIES 229 

Few persons will question that tins transaction 
would have been impossible in the Parliaments before 
the Eeform Bill of 1867. In the days of middle-class 
ascendency every politician found it necessary to place 
himself in general harmony with average educated 
opinion. A very slight shifting of that opinion, es- 
pecially in the smaller boroughs, could be decisive. 
There was always an ultimate court of appeal, which 
could be relied on to judge promptly, with shrewdness 
and patriotism, and some real knowledge of the facts 
of the case. Mere rhetoric and claptrap ; brilliant 
talent, unallied with Judgment ; coalitions to carry 
some measure which the country condemned by unit- 
ing it with a number of bribes offered to many different 
classes ; policies in which great national interests were 
sacrificed to personal ambition or to party tricks ; the 
dexterity which multiplies, evades, or confuses issues, 
had seldom even a temporary success. The judgment 
of average educated men on the whole prevailed ; and 
although that judgment may not be very quick or far- 
seeing, or open to new ideas, it rarely failed to arrive 
at a just estimate of a practical issue. 

But the changes that introduced into the con- 
stituencies a much larger proportion of ignorance, in- 
difference, or credulity soon altered the conditions of 
politics. The element of uncertainty was greatly in- 
creased. Politicians learned to think less of convincing 
the reason of the country than of combining hetero- 
geneous and independent groups, or touching some 
strong chord of widespread class interest or prejudice. 
The sense of shame to a remarkable degree diminished. 
It would once have been intolerable to an English 
public man to believe that, in spite of all differences 
of opinion, he was not followed through life and to the 
grave by the respect of the great body of his educated 



230 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. il 

fellow-countrymen. This sentiment has greatly faded. 
Men have now become very indifferent to what they 
would nickname the opinion of the classes or the 
clubs^ provided they can succeed^ by the methods I 
have described^ in winning a majority and obtaining 
power and office. The party game is played more 
keenly and more recklessly^ and traditional feelings as 
well as traditional customs have greatly lost their force. 

This tendency is increased by the extreme rush and 
hurry of modern life, which naturally joroduces some 
levity of character. A constant succession of new im- 
pressions and ideas takes away from societies, as from 
individuals, the power of feeling anything deeply and 
persistently. Disgrace never seems indelible when it 
is so soon forgotten, and the strong, steady currents of 
national sentiment and tendency, on which the great- 
ness of empires depends, become impossible. Con- 
tinuity of policy is more difficult, and, with a jaded 
political palate, the appetite for experiment and sensa- 
tion becomes more powerful. 

In the whole field of politics, personal and class in- 
terests seem to have grown stronger ; and the latter are 
often not even those of a very large class. The objects 
of an ordinary trade strike have begun to blend power- 
fully with national politics. In the dockyard towns, 
it has long been said that questions of wages, salaries, 
or employment dominate over all others. There have 
been instances in which the political votes of the police 
force, of the Post-office officials, of the Civil Service 
clerks, have been avowedly marshalled for the purpose 
of obtaining particular class advantages.^ In county 



1 A remarkable paper, giving will be found in the Times, 
instances in which this kind of October 15, 1892. 
pressure has been employed. 



CH. II. POLITICAL CRIMES 231 

councils and other small elective bodies, it is probable 
that these motives will, in England as in America, be 
easily and efficaciously employed. When the votes of a 
body of men in a nearly balanced contest may be pur- 
chased with public money, or at least lost if public 
money is withheld, a higher standard of public virtue 
than is now general is required to resist a mode of 
bribery which is at once cheap, easy, and not illegal. 
A pov/erful trade union may capture a small elected 
body, and a weak government resting on a fluctuating 
and a disintegrated majority is strongly tempted to 
conciliate every detached group of voters. 

The reader must judge for himself whether this 
picture is untrue or overcharged ; if he believes it to 
be true, he will hardly question its gravity. The evil 
I have described is much aggravated by the very in- 
adequate sense of the criminality of political misdeeds 
that prevails widely in contemporary thought. In the 
case of those acts of open violence and treason which 
are commonly described as political crimes, this may 
be largely traced to the time when power was in the 
hands of a very few, when religious liberty, and per- 
sonal liberty, and liberty of expression Avere all un- 
known, and when much of the highest and purest 
heroism was displayed in resisting intolerable oppres- 
sion. Much of the poetic glamour which was thrown 
over the revolutionists of those days still remains, 
though in nearly all countries the circumstances have 
wholly changed. Under the popular governments of 
modern times revolution is nearly always a crime, and 
usually a crime of the first magnitude, l^o one, as I 
have elsewhere said, ' who has any adequate sense of the 
enormous mass of suffering which the authors of a re- 
bellion let loose upon their country will speak lightly 
of this crime, or of the importance of penalties that 



232 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

may deter others from following in their steps. . . . 
In the great lottery of civil war the prizes are enor- 
mous ; and when such prizes may be obtained by a 
course of action which is jJi'ofoundly injurious to the 
State, the deterrent influence of severe penalties is 
especially necessary. In the immense majority of 
cases^ the broad distinction which it is now the fashion 
to draw between political and other crimes is both 
pernicious and untrue. There is no sphere in which 
the worst passions of human nature may operate more 
easily and more dangerously than in the sphere of 
politics. There is no criminal of a deeper dye than 
the adventurer who is gambling for power with the 
lives of men. There are no crimes which produce 
vaster or more enduring suffering than those which sap 
the great pillars of order in the State, and destroy the 
res]3ect for life, for property, and for law on which all 
true progress depends." 

Let any one examine the chief revolutionary move- 
ments of our time, and he may soon convince himself 
that by far the greater number of them have been led 
by some ambitious soldier, or politician, or pretender, 
simply actuated by a desire for wealth and power, by a 
wish to defeat and overthrow a competitor, by over- 
weening vanity, or by a mere love of excitement, ad- 
venture, and notoriety. A man who through such 
motives makes a revolution which destroys a multitude 
of lives, ruins the credit and commerce of a nation, 
scatters far and wide the seeds of anarchy, disaster and 
long-continued depression, and perhaps begins the 
decadence of his nation, surely deserves a prompt and 
ignominious death as much as the man who, under the 
influence of want, or passion, or drink, has committed 
an ordinary murder. A public opinion is very morbid 
which looks on these things as venial. It is the cus- 



CH. II. POLITICAL MORALITY 233 

torn in England to assert that such crimes as the mur- 
ders in the Phoenix Park^ or the massacre or at- 
tempted massacre by an Anarchist^s bomb of a number 
of innocent persons in some place of public amuse- 
ment^ are not Apolitical/ It does not appear to me 
reasonable to deny this character to acts which were 
inspired by no motive of private gain or malice^ and 
were directly and exclusively intended to produce 
political ends. But the fact that they were political 
does not attenuate their atrocity, nor ought it to miti- 
gate the punishment of the criminal. 

In home affairs^ while the widest toleration should 
be accorded to all honest diversities of opinion and 
policy, there are courses of conduct v/hich involve the 
deepest turpitude, and which, at the same time, bring 
with them no legal penalties, and can only be re- 
strained and punished by opinion. If a man, for the 
mere purpose of winning votes, seeks to plunge his 
country into an unrighteous or unnecessary war, or to 
prolong a war which might be terminated with honour ; 
to set class against class and deepen the lines of divi- 
sion and animosity ; to place the power of government 
in the hands of dishonest or disloyal men, and assist 
them in carrying out their designs ; if for the sake of 
an office, or a pension, or a peerage, he supports a 
policy which he knows to be unrighteous or unwise, he 
is certainly committing a moral offence of the deepest 
dye. Judgments which relate to motives are, no 
doubt, always uncertain, and ample allowance should 
be made for the eccentricities of honest opinion. A 
course which seems to most men very iniquitous may 
appear to some men positively good, or the lesser of 
two evils, or the necessary fulfilment of an old engage- 
ment, or an inevitable result of preceding policy. Yet 
still public opinion can, with a rough but substantial 



234 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

justice, estimate the characters and the motives of 
public men, and it is a very evil sign when it looks 
without serious reprobation on those whom it believes 
to be acting without convictions ; to be playing with 
great national interests for party or personal ends, as 
if they were cards in a game or horses in a race. 

This consideration is quite compatible with the fact 
that men acting in parties are frequently obliged, on 
public grounds, to subordinate their own judgment on 
minor questions to that of their party. They are often 
confronted with the question whether supporting a bad 
measure is not a less evil than displacing a good go- 
vernment or breaking up or enfeebling a useful organi- 
sation, and they are often obliged to vote for or against 
one measure with a view to carrying or defeating a 
totally different one. They must look to the whole 
results of their conduct, ulterior as well as proximate. 
In France, a large number of the best men of our cen- 
tury have successively supported more than one dynasty 
and republic, and they were not wrong in doing so. 
Though they preferred one or other form of govern- 
ment, they considered that the evils of instability and 
revolution were so great that it was the part of a pa- 
triotic man to strengthen the existing form, if it was 
only a tolerable one, and endeavour to graft upon it the 
best characteristics of the other forms. 

In party parliamentary government, questions of 
ethics of a much more perplexing character continually 
arise. Some men differ from the dominant tendencies 
of their party, but not so strongly or universally as 
to induce them to break formally the ties of long- 
standing engagements ; or they remain in it because 
they believe that it would be a great public calamity if 
it were deprived of its moderating element, and thrown 
altogether into the hands of extreme men. Usually, 



CH. 11. POLITICAL MORALITY 236 

while the extremes of rival parties differ widely, there 
is a frontier line where the two parties almost blend. 
Sometimes, as in the latter days of Lord Palmers ton^s 
life, the lines of party have been so faintly drawn that 
a rising politician might very reasonably consider it a 
matter of great indifference to which party he attached 
himself. At other times parties are deeply sundered 
by questions vitally affecting the wellbeing of the 
nation. In practical politics there must always be 
much compromise and mutual concession ; and, as 
Hallam long since said, the centrifugal and the centri- 
petal forces, which correspond roughly to the rival 
party tendencies, are both needed to preserve the due 
balance of affairs. There are great evils, as well as 
great advantages, attending the party system, and 
there are periods when these evils seem brought into a 
more than common prominence. 

All this, however, is clearly distinct from the con- 
duct of a politician who, in matters of grave national 
concern, regulates his actions with an exclusive view 
to his own interests. In English opinion, very glaring 
instances of political profligacy are distinguished 
broadly from acts of private and personal dishonesty, 
such as malversation in the administration of public 
funds. But the distinction is, in truth, an nnreal 
one, and it is not likely to last. A man who remains 
in a party which he would otherwise have abandoned, 
or votes for some important measure which he would 
have otherwise opposed, because he has been bought 
by the offer of a peerage or a place, would probably be 
incapable of swindling and cheating at cards, but his 
conduct is not really less dishonourable. The false 
trustee to the public will easily, under sufficient 
temptation, turn into the fraudulent bankrupt, and a 
public opinion which is lax and indulgent in dealing 



236 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

with one form of dislionesty will soon learn to look 
with toleration on the other. The same type of cha- 
racter which produces the unscrupulous professional 
politician produces also the too familiar fraudulent 
director. AVe need not look beyond the Atlantic for 
examples. 

There is hardly any field, indeed, in which moral 
notions are more confused and inconsistent than in 
politics. Let any one, for example, read the report of 
the judgment of the Parnell Commission, and the 
sworn testimony on which it was based, and let him 
then remember that the men who were distinctly 
proved to have organised, encouraged, stimulated, and 
profited by all the violence, fraud, intimidation, and 
crime that is there recorded received the support of the 
great body of the Catholic priests in Ireland, and of 
the great body of Nonconformist ministers in England. 
There were, it is true, noble exceptions. The names 
that had most weight in the Is"onconformity of our 
time — the names of Spurgeon, and Fraser, and Allon, 
and Dale — stand in this respect beyond reproach. But 
the majority of the English and AVelsh iS^onconform- 
ists took a different course, and their ministers have 
in the present generation been ardent politicians, 
prominent on the platform, and not unfrequently in- 
troducing their politics into the pulpit. They were, 
apparently, entirely unmoved by the judicial inquiry 
which proved beyond all joossibility of doubt the com- 
plicity of the men they supported with crime. The 
boycotting, the Plan of Campaign, the incendiary 
speeches, the open advocacy of public plunder, the 
connection with American dynamiters, the concealed 
accounts, the many instances of hideous cruelty and 
oppression of the weak that were distinctly traceable to 
the Irisli Land League, all left these religious teachers 



CH. II. POLITICAL MORALITY 237 

completely undisturbed. These things were regarded 
as merely Apolitical/ At last^ however, it was shown 
that the prime mover of the Irish agitation had been 
guilty of adultery. It was a very ordinary case, with- 
out much special aggravation, and such as might be 
found in almost every newspaper. Then, for the first 
time, the Nonconformist conscience was aroused. It 
was intolerable that a truly religious party should be 
in alliance with a politician guilty of such an act ; and 
the explosion of moral indignation, which began in the 
Nonconformist ranks, soon shook the land, and de- 
tached by successive impacts the Prime Minister, the 
Irish bishops, and most of the Irish members from 
their old connection. Can those who witnessed this 
grotesque exhibition wonder at the charge of Pharisaism 
and hypocrisy which foreign observers so abundantly 
bring against English public opinion ? Can they be 
surprised that ^ the Nonconformist conscience ^ is ra- 
pidly becoming a byword in England, much like the 
^ moral sentiments ' of Joseph Surface ? 

My readers will not, I hope, so far misunderstand 
these remarks as to attribute to me any indifference to 
the private morals of public men. The example of men 
who hold a high and responsible position before the 
world exercises a more than common influence, and it 
is therefore specially desirable that they should be men 
of untarnished honour and blameless lives. There 
have been instances of men of very lax domestic morals 
who have been excellent politicians, and of men of 
exemplary private characters who have in Parliament 
been unprincipled and corrupt ; but still private virtue 
is at least some guarantee for the right performance of 
public duty ; while a man who has lost his position in 
the world through a great moral scandal would be al- 
most more than human if he did not subordinate all 



238 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

political convictions and public interests to regaining 
it. But, after all, it is not the private vices of public 
men that are most dangerous to the community. It 
may be a curious question of casuistry whether it is a 
more immoral thing to commit adultery, or to incite to 
intimidation which leads to crime and outrage, persist- 
ing in it ^ with knowledge of its effect. ' ^ There can, 
at least, be no doubt which of these two acts is more 
injurious to the State. 

The maintenance of a high standard of right and 
wrong in the field of politics is certainly one of the first 
of national interests, and it becomes increasingly diffi- 
cult with the democratic tendency to throw public 
affairs more and more into the hands of professional 
politicians. To other classes the House of Commons 
has lost much of its old attraction. The extraordinary 
prolongation of its sessions ; the growth of mere ob- 
struction in its debates ; the increased prominence of 
parliamentary manoeuvre, requiring a more incessant 
attendance ; the vast amount of stump oratory, and 
other wearisome work, which is now expected both 
from a candidate and a member, are making public life 
far more burdensome than in the past, and are gradu- 
ally alienating from it men who have no strong per- 
sonal object to gain. The influences that have begun 
to dominate at elections neither attract nor favour the 
best men. Such men will not readily consent to be 
mere delegates or puppets of a caucus, and they are not 
likely to be skilful in conciliating by vague promises 
groups of impracticable theorists, and in employing 
the language of class bribery. 

The withdrawal of nearly all forms of local govern- 
ment from magistrates and from nominated bodies, and 



Special Commission Report^ pp. 88, 92. 



CH. II. ELECTIVE LOCAL GOVERNMENT 239 

the great multiplicity of elected and democratic bodies^ 
tend in the same direction. In the cases — happily^ 
in the present century^ very rare in England — in which 
public funds were corruptly administered for the 
benefit of the few, the introduction of the elective sys- 
tem on a broad basis may be a valuable corrective, 
though no one would maintain that local administra- 
tion is, on the whole, purer in America than it has 
long been in England. It is contended, however, with 
justice, in favour of the elective system that it forms 
one of the best schools or training-grounds for the 
politician ; that it gives an intelligent interest in pub- 
lic affairs to multitudes who had long been very indif- 
ferent to them ; that it furnishes a security that the 
wants of all classes should be brought to light, and at 
least discussed ; and that it infuses a new strength and 
energy into local administration. 

All this is, I believe, very true, and very important. 
At the same time there are manifest and serious draw- 
backs. One of them is increased expense, which near- 
ly always follows when a nominated or magisterial 
body is replaced by a democratic elected one ; another 
is a great multiplication of antagonisms and dissensions. 
In many quiet country parishes, where Churchmen 
and Dissenters, Liberals and Conservatives, long lived 
in almost perfect amity, social fissures are now deepen- 
ing, and constantly recurring elections are keeping up 
a permanent fever of contention. The elections for 
the school board, for the county council, for the parish 
council, the parliamentary elections, which now imply 
constant party meetings extending through the greater 
part of the session, are ranging the different parties 
more and more in hostile committees and opposing 
platforms, and whatever good may result is certainly 
produced by a great deal of ill-feeling and discomfort. 



240 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

Xotliingj too^ as we have already seeii^ is more clearly 
established by American experience than that very 
frequent contested elections tend to lower the moral 
tone of politics^ and to throw them more and more 
into the hands of the professional politician. 

It would, I believe, be a mistake to suppose that 
under the new conditions wealth will disappear, or 
even exercise a greatly diminished power in politics, 
but the rich men who will chiefly enter Parliament are 
not the kind who are most desirable. Three classes 
appear to have an increasing prominence. There are 
those who, having amassed large fortunes in trade, 
commerce, or manufacture, desire above all things 
social position, and are prepared to sacrifice large sums 
to attain it. The social precedence which a seat in 
Parliament affords, and the ^possibilities of rank which 
are open to every rich man wlio steadily supports his 
party, become their guiding motives, and very often 
shape the whole course of their political calculations. 
There are also j)rosperous law3'ers who enter Parlia- 
ment for professional objects, knoAving that it is the 
path which leads directly to the chief honours in their 
profession ; and there is the large cla?s of business men 
connected with public com^oanies, who find a political 
position useful to their financial enterprises. The in- 
creasing number of directors in Parliament, and the 
desire of companies to have members of Parliament for 
their directors, are significant signs, not, I think, of 
good omen for the purity of politics. As State func- 
tions multiply, including many things that were once 
left to 2^1'ivate commercial enterprise, the position of 
member of Parliament is likely to have an increasing- 
value in the fields of patronage, industry, and finance. 
Men of these different classes are often among the most 
dangerous of demagogues. Private aims predominate 



CH. II. DEMOCRATIC TENDENCIES 241 

with them over public ones. If they can attain them, 
they care little for a large expenditure or sacrifice of 
money, and their special interests are usually only 
very slightly identified with the permanent interests of 
the country. 

Two or three measures which are much advocated 
would confirm the power of the professional politician. 
I have already spoken of the abolition of university 
representation. It is not a measure which would have 
very extensive consequences, but it would at least expel 
from Parliament a small class of members who repre- 
sent in an eminent degree intelligence and knowledge 
diffused throughout the country ; who, from the man- 
ner of their election, are almost certain to be men of 
political purity and independent character, and who, 
for that very reason, are especially obnoxious to the 
more unscrupulous type of demagogue. Their expul- 
sion would be a considerable party advantage to one 
faction in the State, and it is therefore likely to be 
steadily pursued, 

A more considerable measure would be. that of throw- 
ing the whole or a large part of the expenses of elec- 
tions on the rates. There is much to be said in its 
defence. It is not a natural thing that men should be 
expected to pay largely for discharging what should be 
a public duty, for rendering what should be a public 
service. Payment from the rates would render it much 
easier for men of moderate fortunes to enter the House, 
and it would very possibly diminish the appetite for 
place, or for the less legitimate forms of gain, which 
are often sought merely for the purpose of recovering 
an expenditure already made. Men who have paid 
much for a position easily persuade themselves that it 
is legitimate to make profit out of it, and to regard 
their expenditure as an investment. But, unless pay- 

VOL. I. 10 



242 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

ment from public sources were restricted to candidates 
who obtained a considerable amount of support at the 
poll^ it would multiply useless and mischievous con- 
tests, and, like the payment of members, which would 
probably follow it, besides adding largely to the cost 
of government, it would greatly smooth the path of the 
professional agitator or wirepuller. 

The reader will, I hope, understand that in the fore- 
going remarks I am describing tendencies which appear 
to me to be in operation and not fully accomplished 
facts. It would take a long time, and many disastrous 
revolutions, to break down the firm texture of English 
political life. The old feelings of traditional reve- 
rence ; the long-established organisations of property 
and class and corporate existence ; the shrewdness and 
sobriety of judgment, and, above all, the sound moral 
feeling which a long and noble history has implanted in 
all classes of the British people, have not disappeared, 
though power is passing mainly into the hands of the 
most uninstructed, and therefore least intelligent, 
classes, and though low motives are in consequence 
acquiring a greater prominence in English politics. 
Still, there have been encouraging signs that a politi- 
cian who is ready to sacrifice his character in order 
to win power or popularity may make the sacrifice 
without obtaining the reward. Manufactured and or- 
ganised agitations ; ingenious combinations of hetero- 
geneous elements ; skilful attempts to win votes by 
distributing class bribes or inflaming class or national 
animosities, have not always proved successful. The 
deliberate judgment of the constituencies on a great 
question which strongly arouses national feeling will, 
I believe, seldom be wrong, though there is an in- 
creased danger that they may be for a time misled, 
and that such influences as I have described may 



CH. II. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS 243 

obtain a temporary ascendency in the House of Com- 
mons. 

The high standard, both of professional honour and 
of competence, that has long prevailed in our perma- 
nent services is certainly unimpaired, and, in days 
when parliamentary government is in its decadence, 
the importance to national wellbeing of a good perma- 
nent service can hardly be overrated. Parliament it- 
self, though it shows many evil signs, has escaped some 
which may be detected in other legislatures. It would 
be difficult to exaggerate the value of the standing 
order which provides that the House of Commons shall 
make no money grant except at the initiative of the 
responsible Ministers of the Crown. Probably no other 
provision has done so much to check extravagance and 
to place a bound to that bribery by legislation which is 
one of the distinctive dangers of democracy ; and the 
absence of such a rule has been justly described as one 
of the great sources of the corruption and extravagance 
of French finance. The Committee system also, which 
seems likely to become in England, as it has already 
become in America, the most important thing in parlia- 
mentary government, is still essentially sound. The 
House of Commons as a whole is becoming so unfit for 
the transaction of the details of business that it will 
probably more and more delegate its functions to Com- 
mittees ; and these Committees submit great questions 
to a thorough examination, bring together the most 
competent practical judges and the best available infor- 
mation, weaken the force of party, and infuse into 
legislation something, at least, of a judicial spirit. 

I have already alluded to the great political value of 
the competitive system of examination as applied to 
the public services. It has undoubtedly many and 
grievous drawbacks, and few good judges will deny 



244 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. il 

that examinations have been overdone in England, and 
that in these examinations mere book knowledge has 
been too prominent. Sometimes, indeed, there has 
been an almost grotesque dissimilarity between the 
character of the examination and the career to which 
it leads ; as, for example, when questions about Spen- 
ser's ' Faerie Queene,' or about English parliamentary 
history, or about classical literature, are said to have 
turned the scale for or against a candidate who is ex- 
amined for the army. Many of the qualities that are 
most useful in the administration of affairs and the 
management of men can be neither given nor tested by 
examination. Tact, knowledge of men, sound judg- 
ment, promptitude and resolution in times of danger, 
and that charm of manner which adds so much, espe- 
cially in Eastern nations, to the success of administra- 
tions, lie wholly beyond the range of the examination 
hall. There are positions in life in which the wild, idle, 
high-spirited boy, whose natural bent is all to sport 
and to adventure, but who is utterly without the turn 
of mind or character that triumphs in examinations, is 
more likely to succeed than the plodding, industrious 
boy who will win the prize. The competitive system 
is in theory a very democratical one, but, like many 
democratic measures, it does not altogether fulfil its 
promise. It is a system which gives a wholly dispro- 
portionate share of the world's goods to a small minori- 
ty who are endowed with a particular kind of capacity. 
It is a system also in which money plays a great part, 
for it has become all but impossible for boys to succeed 
in the most keenly contested examinations unless they 
have had the advantage of special and expensive teach- 
ing. It is curious to observe how often, under the old 
aristocratic system of patronage, a poor man gained a 
place on the ladder of promotion which he could not 



CH. II. COMPETITIVE EXAMINATIONS 245 

have reached under the present system. An officer 
who^ like so many of his profession^ found himself 
towards the close of a useful and honourable life with 
only a very humble competence, could, under the old 
system, always obtain for his son a commission with- 
out purchase in the army. His son must now enter by 
an examination, and he will hardly succeed unless the 
father is able to give him the advantage of an experi- 
enced crammer. 

In India the competitive system may prove a serious 
danger. In that country the nimbleness of mind and 
tongue which succeeds in examinations is, to a degree 
quite unknown in Europe, separated from martial 
courage, and from the strength of nerve and character 
that wins the respect of great masses, and marks out 
the rulers of men. In the opinion of the best judges, 
a system vvdiich would bring to the forefront the weak, 
effeminate Bengalese, to the detriment of the old go- 
verning races of India and of the strong, warlike popu- 
lations of the Xorth, would be the sure precursor of a 
catastrophe. 

But, with all its drawbacks, the competitive system 
has been, I think, in England a great blessing, and the 
disadvantages that attend it have been mitigated by 
more intelligent kinds of examination and by a judi- 
cious mixture of patronage and competition, which 
gives some power of selection to men in responsible 
positions. The competitive sj^stem realises, on the 
whole, more perfectly than any other that has been yet 
devised the ideal of the Revolution : ' La carriere 
ouverte aux talents.' If patronage were always exercised 
with perfect wisdom and public spirit, it would, no 
doubt, bring forward better men, but there is no real 
reason to believe that the class who, in Great Britain, 
are produced by the competitive system are, on the 



246 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

wbole^ at all inferior to their predecessors. At the 
same time^ its value in keej)ing the public services 
pure from corruption can hardly be overstated. It is 
the one real protection against the complete dominance 
of the ' spoils system/ and it is a protection which is 
likely to last. In a democratic age it is very difficult 
to correct democratic evils except by democratic reme- 
dies. It would be impossible to measure the corrup- 
tion which would ensue if all the powers of patronage 
and nomination that were once in the hands of govern- 
ments and aristocracies were placed in the hands of 
popular bodies, to be scrambled for by professional 
politicians or used as bribes by contending factions. 

It is a truth which is not sufficiently recognised, that 
the general character of a nation cannot always be fairly 
judged by the character of its public men or of its politi- 
cal actions. In a really sound representative system 
this remark would not apply. One of the truest tests 
of a good constitution is, that it brings into habitual 
political action the best characteristics of the nation. 
But in the extremes both of despotism and of democracy 
political action is often a strangely deceptive guide to 
national character. Governments sometimes pursue a 
constantly aggressive, military, and violent policy, sim- 
ply because power is in the hands of a small class, and 
because the bulk of the nation are so mild, peaceful, 
and loyal that they can be easily led. In democracies, 
as America has abundantly shown, politics may be an 
equally faithless mirror of the best side of the national 
character. The politics of a nation and the character 
of its public men may deteriorate, not because the 
aggregate intelligence or virtue of the nation has di- 
minished, but simply because the governing power has 
descended to classes who are less intelligent, less scru- 
pulous, or more easily deceived. 



CH. II. POLITICS AND NATIONAL CHARACTER 247 

If it be true — as there seems great reason to be- 
lieve — that parliamentary government in England has 
entered on its period of decadence, it becomes a ques- 
tion of the highest importance to ascertain whether 
this implies a general decadence in the national cha- 
racter. I do not myself believe it. It appears to me 
hardly possible to compare the present generation of 
Englishmen with the generation of our grandfathers 
and great-grandfathers without believing that, on the 
whole, English character has improved. The statistics 
of crime are, no doubt, in this respect an imperfect test, 
for the criminal class always forms only a small section 
of the community, and an increase or diminution of 
actual criminal offences often depends upon circum- 
stances that are only very slightly connected with the 
average morals of the community. As far, however, 
as this test goes, it is eminently satisfactory, for there 
can be no doubt that most forms of grave crime, in 
proportion to population, have, in the present genera- 
tion, greatly diminished. Nor is this surprising, for 
no feature of our century is more remarkable than the 
skill with which, by reformatories and industrial and 
other schools, by factory laws, by the diminution of in- 
sanitary dwellings, and by the better regulation of the 
drink traffic, modern philanthropy has succeeded in 
restricting or purifying the chief sources of national 
crime. As a single illustration of the change that has 
taken place, I may mention that in 1834 it was officially 
stated in Parliament that not less than one-fifth of the 
army stationed in England had, in the two preceding 
years, passed through the common gaols. ^ The great 
diminution of ordinary crime in England is especially 
remarkable, because both in France and in the United 



' Hansard^ xxv. 281. 



248 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

States there has been^ in the present generation, a great 
and a deplorable increase. 

Not less conspicuous is the improvement that has 
taken place in the decorum, civilisation, and humanity 
of the bulk of the poor ; in the character of their tastes 
and pleasures ; in their enlarged circle of interests ; in 
the spirit of providence which, under the influence of 
savings banks and kindred institutions, has arisen 
among them. The skilled artisans in our great towns, 
within the memory of living men, have become, not 
only the most energetic, but also one of the most intel- 
ligent and orderly elements, in English life. No one 
who has come into close contact with their political 
organisations, or trade unions, or mechanics^ institutes, 
or free libraries, or who has watched the working-class 
audience of some great scientific lecturer, will deem 
this an exaggeration. The spirit of humanity has im- 
mensely increased, both in the form that shrinks from 
the infliction of suffering and in the form that seeks 
out suffering in order to alleviate it. Churches and 
creeds Avill come and go ; but the best index of the 
moral level of a community is to be found in the 
amount of unselfish action that is generated within it. 
I do not believe that there has ever been a period in 
England, or in any other country, when more time, 
thought, money, and labour were bestowed on the alle- 
viation of suffering, or in which a larger number of 
men and women of all classes threw themselves more 
earnestly and more habitually into unselfish causes. 
Both v/ithin and without the Church the passion for 
social reform and philanthropic action has, to a large 
extent, displaced theological enthusiasm ; but, at the 
same time, the increased activity of the Established 
Church is very apparent, the standard of duty among 
its clergy is appreciably raised, and its patronage is ad- 



CH. II. SIGNS OF IMPROVEMENT 249 

ministered in a far better and purer spirit than in the 
past. 

All this is, no doubt, compatible with the growth of 
some special forms of vice. It may perhaps be com- 
patible with a decline of those stronger and more ro- 
bust qualities that chiefly lead to political greatness. 
Whether in this last field there has been any decadence 
in England is a question on which it is difficult to pro- 
nounce. The last occasion in which England was en- 
gaged in a life-and-death struggle against overwhelming 
odds was in the Indian Mutiny ; and, in that now dis- 
tant crisis, it must be owned that there was no failing 
in the stronger, fiercer, and more tenacious qualities 
that have made England what she is. Amid all the 
much-obtruded sentimentalisms of our time there are 
indications that the fibre of the race is still unimpaired. 
The old love of manly sports was never more abun- 
dantly displayed ; in the great fields of adventure and 
discovery, in the forms of commercial and industrial 
enterprise that most tax the energies and resources of 
men, modern Englishmen bear their full part, and no 
other people are doing so much to explore, subdue, 
and civilise far-distant and savage lands. 

Have their governing qualities declined ? Have the 
Englishmen of our day learnt to prefer words to things 
and plausibilities to facts, and men who are cunning 
in the arts of parliamentary fence and political ma- 
ncBuvre to men of wise judgment and solid character ? 
Carlyle believed that they had, and there have been 
symptoms in these later days that support his opi- 
nion. I believe, however, that they will nearly all 
be found in close connection with the influence of a 
democratic Parliament. When Englishmen escape 
from its interference and its contagion, their old high 
governing qualities seldom fail to shine. No piece of 



250 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

more skilful, successful, and beneficent administration 
lias been accomplished in our day, under circumstances 
of great difficulty, than the English administration of 
Eg3'pt, and no achievement of secular government 
since the Eoman Empire can compare in its magnitude 
and splendour with the British Empire in India. The 
men who built up that gigantic empire, who have 
maintained for so many generations and over so vast 
an area peace and prosperity and order, who have put 
a stop to so many savage wars and eradicated so many 
cruel customs, are the statesmen of whom England 
should be most proud. There is no sign that they 
have lost their cunning ; and if such men and such 
modes of government could have been employed nearer 
home, many old injustices and discontents would have 
long since passed away. 

He would be a sanguine man who ventured to pre- 
dict with confidence the long duration of this supreme 
monument of the genius and the character of our race ; 
but most good judges will agree that the great danger 
that menaces it is to be found neither at Calcutta 
nor at St. Petersburg, but at Westminster. It is 
to be found in combinations of fanaticism with in- 
trigue that are peculiarly dangerous in a country ruled 
by feeble governments, and disintegrated parliaments, 
and ignorant constituencies ; it is to be found in the 
introduction into India of modes and maxims of 
government borrowed from modern European demo- 
cracies, and utterly unsuited to an Oriental people ; it 
is to be found in acts of injustice perpetrated by 
Parliament in obedience to party motives and to the 
pressure of local interests. Two shameful instances of 
this kind are very recent. The Commission sent out 
to India to inquire into the opium traffic in 1893 was 
wholly due to the action in the House of Commons of 



CH. iL INDIAN GOVERNMENT 251 

a little knot of fanatics and agitators in England^, un- 
prompted by any voice in India^ and carried contrary 
to the whole force of experienced Indian opinion. 
Yet it was at first determined that a great part of its 
cost should be thrown on the Indian taxpayer. Still 
graver in its probable effects was the policy which for- 
bade India, in a time of deep financial distress, to raise 
a revenue by import duties on English cotton, in ac- 
cordance with the almost unanimous desire of her ad- 
ministrators and her educated public opinion. No 
one ever doubted that, if India possessed representa- 
tive institutions, or if the opinions of English adminis- 
trators in India or of Indian administrators at home 
had been taken, such duties would have been imposed. 
But votes might have been lost, an agitation might 
have been raised in England, and both parties feared 
to run the risk. 

Fortunately, in these two cases the false steps that 
had been taken did not prove irrevocable. The Minis- 
ter for India (Mr. Fowler), to his infinite credit, had 
the courage to insist at all hazards upon revising 
them, and he found sufficient patriotism in the Op- 
position to enable him to secure the support of a large 
majority in the House of Commons. Seldom indeed 
in recent years has the chord of genuine public spirit 
in that House been so powerfully and so successfully 
struck. But the original faults were very grave, and 
they illustrate the dangers to which democratic parlia- 
mentary government with a weak executive exposes 
the great interests of the Empire. 

The blame must be divided between both parties. 
In both parties the minister representing India has, I 
believe, usually done his best, short of resigning his 
office ; but when a small group of voters may turn 
the balance, the great interests of India are but too 



252 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cH. ll. 

likely to be sacrificed to the party game. It is often 
said that England holds India by the sword ; but this, 
though largely, is not wholly true. If the belief of 
the great masses of the Indian people in the essential 
integrity and beneficence of English rule is ever 
shaken, one of the chief pillars of our power will have 
been destroyed. 

Our Indian experience, however, at least shows that 
the governing qualities of the race remain ; and the 
same truth is taught by the admirable corporate govern- 
ment which has grown up in our great towns. It is 
very doubtful whether the spirit of municipal and local 
patriotism was more strongly develoj^ed either in an- 
cient Greece, or, during the Middle Ages, in the great 
towns of Italy and Flanders or along the Baltic, than 
it now is in Birmingham, or Liverpool, or Manchester. 
The self-governing qualities that are displayed in these 
great centres, the munificence and patriotism with 
which their public institutions are supported, the 
strong stream of distinctive political tendency that 
emanates from them, are among the most remarkable 
and most consolatory facts of English life. In France, 
the ascendency of Paris has almost atrophied political 
life in the provincial towns, and the capital has again 
and again shown itself sufficiently powerful to re- 
verse the decision of the country. In America, the 
corruption of municipal government in nearly all the 
more important cities is the worst side of the national 
life. England has hitherto escaped both of these 
evils, and the political weight of the chief provincial 
towns is unquestionable. The Manchester school of 
the last generation, and the Birmingham school of the 
present generation, have been among the most power- 
ful inflnences in modern politics. 

The growth of an independent provincial spirit has 



CH. II. INFLUENCE OF THE TELEGRAPH 353 

been much accelerated by the telegraph. The politi- 
cal influence of this great invention, though various 
and chequered, has been scarcely less powerful than 
that of the railway. It has brought the distant de- 
pendencies of the Empire into far closer connection 
with the mother country ; but it is very doubtful 
whether the power it has given to the home ministers 
of continually meddling with the details of their ad- 
ministration is a good thing, and there have been 
times of disagreement when a rapid communication be- 
tween foreign countries might have led rather to war 
than to peace. Government by telegraph is a very 
dangerous thing ; and it has been often said that if an 
Atlantic telegraph had connected England with the 
United States in the first excitement of the '^ Trent' 
affair, enabling the two nations, when their blood was 
still hot, to exchange their impressions, a war could 
scarcely have been averted. The telegraph, on the 
other hand, has greatly strengthened the Central 
Government in repressing insurrections, protecting 
property, and punishing crime. It has at least modi- 
fied the Irish difficulty, by bringing Dublin within a 
few minutes' communication of London. It has had 
enormous economical consequences, equalising prices, 
stimulating speculation, destroying in a great measure 
the advantage of priority of time which the inhabi- 
tants of great centres naturally had in many competi- 
tions. 

The effect, however, on which I would now specially 
dwell is its great power in decentralising politics. 
The provincial press, no doubt, owes much to the re- 
peal of the stamp duty and the paper duty ; but the 
immense development and importance it has assumed 
within the lifetime of men who are still of middle age 
are mainly due to the existence of telegraphic commu- 



254 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. ii. 

nicatioii. All kinds of foreign and domestic news, 
and even full reports of debates in Parliament that are 
of any local interest, are printed in an Irish, or Scotch, 
or Liverpool paper as early as in London. The local 
newspaper is thus able, in its own district, to antici- 
pate the news of the London papers, and in conse- 
quence, over large areas of the country where the 
metropolitan press once exercised an enormous influ- 
ence, a London newspaper is now seldom seen. With 
its increased importance and circulation, the provincial 
press can command far more talent than in the past, 
and it has become one of the most important agencies, 
both in indicating and in forming national opinion. 

I do not know that it was ever clearly foreseen that 
while railways were doing so much to centralise, the 
telegraph would do so much to decentralise, multiply- 
ing in England powerful and independent centres of 
political thought and education, building up a jDrovin- 
cial press which often fully rivals in ability that of the 
metropolis, while, within its own spheres of influence, 
it exercises a far greater ascendency. This has been 
one of the great political facts of our time, and, on the 
whole, it seems to me to have been a beneficial one. 
Representative institutions will probably perish by 
ceasing to be representative, genuine opinion being 
overlaid and crushed by great multitudes of ignorant 
voters of one class. In our day, the press is becoming 
far more than the House of Commons the representa- 
tive of the real public opinion of the nation. 

Its growth is but one of the many signs of the in- 
tense and many-sided intellectual and moral energy 
that pervades the country. There are fields, indeed, 
both of thought and action, in which the greatest men 
of our generation are dwarfed by their predecessors ; 
but if we measure our age by the aggregate of its 



CH. II. ENGLAND NOT DECADENT 255 

vitality, by the broad sweep of its energies and achieve- 
ments, the England of our century can hardly fail to 
rank very high. In art, in science, in literature, in 
the enlargement of the bounds of knowledge, in the 
popularisation of acquired knowledge, in inventions 
and discoveries, and in most of the forms of enterprise 
and philanthropy, it has assuredly done much. It 
has produced in Darwin a man who has effected a 
greater revolution in the opinions of mankind than 
anyone, at least since Newton, and whose name is 
likely to live with honour as long as the human race 
moves upon the planet ; while in Gordon it has pro- 
duced a type of simple, self-sacrificing, religious hero- 
ism which is in its own kind as perfect as anything, 
even in the legends of chivalry. A country which has 
produced such men and such works does not seem to 
be in a condition of general decadence, though its Con- 
stitution is plainly worn out, though the balance of 
power within it has been destroyed, and though dis- 
eases of a serious character are fast growing in its poli- 
tical life. The future only can tell whether the energy 
of the English people can be sufficiently roused to check 
these evils, and to do so before they have led to some 
great catastrophe. 



256 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 



CHAPTER III 

I DO not think that any one who seriously con- 
siders the force and universality of the movement of 
our generation in the direction of democracy can doubt 
that this conception of government will necessarily^ at 
least for a considerable time, dominate in all civilised 
countries, and the real question for politicians is the 
form it is likely to take, and the means by which its 
characteristic evils can be best mitigated. As we have, 
I think, abundantly seen, a tendency to democracy 
does not mean a tendency to ^parliamentary govern- 
ment, or even a tendency towards greater liberty. On 
the contrary, strong arguments may be adduced, both 
from history and from the nature of things, to show 
that democracy may often prove the direct opposite of 
liberty. In ancient Rome the old aristocratic republic 
was gradually transformed into a democracy, and it 
then passed speedily into an imperial despotism. In 
France a corresponding change lias more than once 
taken place. A despotism resting on a plebiscite is 
quite as natural a form of democracy as a republic, and 
some of the strongest democratic tendencies are dis- 
tinctly adverse to liberty. Equality is the idol of de- 
mocracy, but, with the infinitely various capacities and 
energies of men, this can only be attained by a con- 
stant, systematic, stringent repression of their natural 
development. Whenever natural forces have unre- 
stricted play, inequality is certain to ensue. Demo- 
cracy destroys the balance of opinions, interests, and 



CH. III. DEMOCRACY IS NOT LIBERTY 257 

classes^ on which constitutional liberty mainly de- 
pends^ and its constant tendency is to impair the 
efficiency and authority of parliaments, which have 
hitherto proved the chief organs of political liberty. 
In the Middle Ages, the two most democratic institu- 
tions were the Church and the guild. The first taught 
the essential spiritual equality of mankind, and placed 
men taken from the servile class on a pedestal before 
which kings and nobles were compelled to bow ; but it 
also formed the most tremendous instrument of spi- 
ritual tyranny the world has ever seen. The second 
organised industry on a self-governing and representa- 
tive basis, but at the same time restricted and regulated 
it in all its details with the most stringent despotism. 

In our own day, no fact is more incontestable and 
conspicuous than the love of democracy for authorita- 
tive regulation. The two things that men in middle 
age have seen most discredited among their contempo- 
raries are probably free contract and free trade. The 
great majority of the democracies of the world are now 
frankly protectionist, and even in free-trade countries 
the multiplication of laws regulating, restricting, and 
interfering with industry in all its departments is one 
of the most marked characteristics of our time. Xor 
are these regulations solely due to sanitary or humani- 
tarian motives. Among large classes of those who 
advocate them another motive is very perceptible. A 
school has arisen among popular working-class leaders 
which no longer desires that superior skill, or industry, 
or providence should reap extraordinary rewards. 
Their ideal is to restrict by the strougest trade-union 
regulations the amount of work and the amount of the 
produce of work, to introduce the principle of legal 
compulsion into every branch of industry, to give the 
trade union an absolute coercive power over its mem- 

VOL. I, 17 



258 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CB. m. 

bers, to attain a high average, but to permit no supe- 
riorities. The industrial organisation to which the}^ 
aspire approaches far more nearly to that of the Middle 
Ages or of the Tudors than to the ideal of Jefferson 
and Cobden. I do not here argue whether this ten- 
dency is good or bad. Xo one at least can suppose that 
it is in the direction of freedom. It may be joermitted 
to doubt whether liberty in other forms is likely to be 
very secure if power is mainly placed in the hands of 
men who, in their own sphere, value it so little. 

The expansion of the authority and the multiplica- 
tion of the functions of the State in other fields, and 
especially in the field of social regulation, is an equally 
apparent accompaniment of modern democracy. This 
increase of State power means a multiplication of re- 
strictions imposed ujion the various forms of human 
action. It means an increase of bureaucracy, or, in 
other words, of the number and power of State officials. 
It means also a constant increase of taxation, which is 
in reality a constant restriction of liberty. One of the 
first forms of liberty is the right of every man to dis- 
pose of his own property and earnings, and every tax is 
a portion of this money taken from him by the force 
and authority of the law. Many of these taxes are, no 
doubt, for purposes in which he has the highest in- 
terest. They give him tlie necessary security of life, 
property, and industry, and they add in countless ways 
to his enjoyment. But if taxes are multiplied for 
carrying out a crowd of objects in which he lias no 
interest, and with many of which he has no sympathy, 
his liberty is proportionately restricted. His money 
is more and more taken from him by force for purposes 
of which he does not apj)rove. The question of taxa- 
tion is in the highest degree a question of liberty, and 
taxation under a democracv is likely to take forms that 



Cir. III. DEMOCRACY IS NOT LIBERTY 259 

are peculiarly hostile to liberty. I have already pointed 
out how the old fundamental principle of English free- 
dom, that no one should be taxed except by his con- 
sent, is being gradually discarded ; and how we are 
steadily advancing to a state in which one class will 
impose the taxes, while another class will be mainly 
compelled to pay them. It is obvious that taxation is 
more and more employed for objects that are not com- 
mon interests of the whole community, and that there is 
a growing tendency to look upon it as a possible means of 
confiscation ; to make use of it to break down the power, 
influence, and wealth of particular classes ; to form a 
new social type ; to obtain the means of class bribery. 

There are other ways in which democracy does not 
harmonise well with liberty. To place the chief power 
in the most ignorant classes is to place it in the hands 
of those who naturally care least for political liberty, 
and who are most likely to follow with an absolute de- 
votion some strong leader. The sentiment of nation- 
ality penetrates very deeply into all classes ; but in all 
countries and ages it is the upper and middle classes 
who have chiefly valued constitutional liberty, and 
those classes it is the work of democracy to dethrone. 
At the same time democracy does much to weaken 
among these also the love of liberty. The instability 
and insecurity of democratic politics ; the spectacle of 
dishonest and predatory adventurers climbing by popu- 
lar suffrage into positions of great power in the State ; 
the alarm which attacks on property seldom fail to 
produce among those who have something to lose, may 
easily scare to the side of despotism large classes who, 
under other circumstances, would have been steady 
supporters of liberty. A despotism which secures 
order, property, and industry, which leaves the liberty 
of religion and of private life unimpaired, and which 



260 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

enables quiet and industrious men to pass through life 
untroubled and unmolested^ will always appear to 
many very preferable to a democratic republic which is 
constantly menacing, disturbing, or plundering them. 
It would be a great mistake to suppose that the French 
despotic Empire after 1852 rested on bayonets alone. 
It rested partly on the genuine consent of those large 
agricultural classes who cared greatly for material pro- 
sperity and very little for constitutional liberty, and 
partly on the panic produced among the middle classes 
by the socialist preaching of 1848. 

The dangers to be apprehended from democracy 
are enormously increased when the transformation is 
effected by sudden bounds. Governments or societies 
may be fundamentally changed, without producing 
any great convulsion or catastrophe, if the continuity 
of habit is preserved, if the changes are made by slow, 
gradual, and almost imperceptible steps. As I have 
already said, it is one of the evils of our present party 
system that it greatly accelerates this progress. Very 
few constitutional changes are the results of a genuine, 
spontaneous, unforced development. They are mainly, 
or at least largely, due to rival leaders bidding against 
each other for popularity ; to agitators seeking for 
party purposes to raise a cry ; to defeated statesm.en 
trying, when they are condemned by existing constitu- 
encies, to regain power by creating new ones. The 
true origin of some of the most far-reaching changes 
of our day is, probably, simply a desire so to shuffle 
cards or combine votes as to win an election. With a 
powerful Upper Chamber and a strong organisation of 
property in the electorate, the conservative influences 
are sufficient to prevent a too rapid change. But 
when these checks are weakened and destroyed, and 
when there are no constitutional provisions to take 



en. III. THE IRISH REPRESENTATION 261 

their place, tlie influences working in the direction of 
change acquire an enormously augmented force, the 
dangers of the process are incalculably increased, and 
the new wine is very likely to burst the old bottles. 

It is impossible to foretell with confident accuracy in 
what form societies will organise their governments if, 
under the pressure of democracy, our present system of 
parliamentary government breaks down. A study of 
the methods which many different countries have 
adopted, and especially of the manner in which Ame- 
rica has dealt with the dangers of democracy, fur- 
nishes us with perhaps the best light we can obtain. 
But, within the framework of the British Constitu- 
tion, a few remedies or mitigations of existing evils 
have been suggested, which may be easily, or at least 
without any insuperable difficulty, introduced. 

The first and most obvious is a change in the Irish 
representation. The presence in the House of Com- 
mons of a body of men who are entirely detached from 
the general interests of the Empire, and prepared to 
subordinate all Imperial concerns to their own special 
policy, must always bring with it some danger ; and 
there could hardly be a greater folly than to allow such 
an element to possess an abnormal and wholly exces- 
sive share in the representation. Few more foolish or 
wicked acts have been done in modern times than the 
lowering of the suffrage in Ireland, by which this great 
evil and danger was deliberately raised to its present 
magnitude, while not a single step was taken, either 
by curtailing representation, or redistributing seats, or 
securing a representation of minorities, to mitigate the 
evil. Such a policy, indeed, would seem simple mad- 
ness if party interest did not furnish an explanation. 
It is acknowledged that the Irish representation, if 
measured by the test of numbers alone, is about 



262 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

twenty-three seats in excess of its proper number. If 
the far more rational test of numbers and taxation 
combined be taken, the excess is still greater. It is an 
excess, too, which is mainly in one portion of Ireland, 
and in one class — the most ignorant, the most disloyal, 
the most amenable to sinister influence. The steady 
action of this party has been to disintegrate and de- 
grade parliamentary government, to support every 
measure in the direction of anarchy or plunder. Yet 
it is Avell known that for some years the Government 
of England depended for its existence, not only on the 
Irish vote, but on the illegitimate strength of that vote. 
If we look through the more revolutionary and dange- 
rous measures of the last few years, we shall find that 
very few have been carried through all their stages by 
an English majority and not many by a British majo- 
rity, while some of the worst measures could never 
have been carried by the votes of the whole kingdom if 
the Irish representatives had not been disproportion- 
ately large. And the men who have kept a Govern- 
ment in 230wer, and largely influenced its policy, have 
been men who are avowedly and ostentatiously indiffe- 
rent to the Avelfare of the Empire, men whose votes on 
questions vitally affecting British or Imperial interests 
are notoriously governed by considerations in Avhich 
these interests have no j)art. It is owing to the exces- 
sive number of such men in Parliament that a system 
of taxation has been carried through the House of Com- 
mons which may break up the social organisation on 
which a great part of the wellbeing of England has de- 
pended for nearly a thousand years. Xo one supposes 
that the Irish surplus which turned the balance felt 
the smallest interest in the result. 

It w^ould be difficult to conceive a situation either 
more dangerous, or more absurd, or more humiliating 



CH. III. THE IRISH REPRESENTATION 263 

than this. According to all rational conceptions of 
constitutional government^ it should be the object of 
the legislator to strengthen the influence of intelli- 
gence, loyalty, and property in the representation, and 
in every change to improve, or not to injure, the cha- 
racter of Parliament. If, however, such ideas are dis- 
carded as obsolete and behind the age, if the new 
worship of mere numbers prevails, to the utter disre- 
gard of all the real interests of the State, the present 
representation of Ireland is still completely indefensible. 
The argument from the 100 votes stipulated by the 
Union treaty has been torn to pieces by the legislation 
of the last few years. A party which has abolished the 
Established Church of Ireland, which the Irish Parlia- 
ment made ' an essential and fundamental part of the 
Union, ^ and which threatens to abolish the Established 
Church of Scotland, which was guaranteed with equal 
solemnity at both the Scotch and the Irish Unions, 
cannot avail itself of such an argument. And the ab- 
surdity becomes still more manifest when it is remem- 
bered that the great industrial counties in Ireland, 
which represent its most progressive and loyal portions, 
are not over-represented, but under-represented, and 
that, as the result of the present system, in three 
provinces property, loyalty, and intelligence are prac- 
tically disfranchised. 

There can be little doubt that a reduction, and at 
the same time a rearrangement, of the Irish represen- 
tation would greatly improve the constitution of par- 
ties, and it would certainly be a great blessing to Ireland. 
Should this reduction be effected, it is to be hoped that 
the seats taken from Ireland may not be added to Great 
Britain, and that statesmen will avail themselves of the 
opportunity to effect some slight diminution of the 
numbers of the House. 



264 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

Xearly all the methods by which it has been at- 
tempted to secure in Parliament a representation of 
the various classes and interests of the commnnity 
seem passing away nnder the influence of democracy. 
Unequal constituencies^ restrictions of the suffrage^ 
property qualifications^ special representations of pro- 
perty ;, are all denounced as op^DOsed to the spirit of the 
age. Direct class representation also^ which has borne 
a large part in the history of representative govern- 
ment, has been steadily declining, though it has in our 
own day some able defenders/ and thougli it is, I think, 
by no means impossible that in some future stage of the 
world^s history it may be largely revived. The appor- 
tionment of political power between distinctly separated 
classes has, indeed, been one of the oldest and most 
fruitful ideas in political philosophy. It existed in 
Athens even before the days of Solon, and Solon, in 
his revision of the Athenian Constitution, divided the 
citizens into four classes, according to the amount of 
their property, subjecting each class to a special pro- 



' See, e.g.^ the remarkable C'est le fait de toutes les mi- 
book of M. Adolphe Prins, norites electorales sous le re- 
L' Organisation de la Liheiie gime de la majorite numerique. 
(Brussels, 1895^. M. Prins ob- . . . Le suffrage universel mo- 
serves : ' II est incontestable derne c'est surtout le suffrage 
que le suffrage universel saus des passions, des courants irre- 
cadres, sans organisation, sans tlechis, des partis extremes. II 
groupement. est un systeme fac- ne laisse aucune place aux idees 
tice : il ne donne que I'ombre moderees et il ecrase les partis 
de la vie politique. 11 n'atteint moderes. La victoire est aux 
pas le seul but vraiment poli- exaltes. La representation des 
tique que I'on doive avoir en interets, qui contient les pas- 
vue, et qui est non de faire vo- sions par les idees, qui modere 
ter tout le monde, mais d'arri- I'ardeur des partis par Taction 
ver a representer le mieux les des facteurs sociaux, donne a la 
interets du plus grand nombre. societe plus d'equilibre ' (pp. 
... On peut avoir le droit 186, 187, 201;. 
de vote sans etre represente. 



CH. III. CLASS REPRESENTATION 2Qo 

portion of taxation, and giving each class special and 
peculiar privileges in the State/ In the Eoman repub- 
lic the citizens were divided into six different classes, 
according to the amount of their property, the lowest 
class comprising the poorest citizens ; and each class 
was subdivided into a number of ' centuries/ propor- 
tioned to what was considered their importance in the 
State, and each century had a single vote in enacting 
laws and electing magistrates. Cicero claims for this 
system that it gave some voice to every class, but a 
greatly preponderating voice to those who had most 
interest in the wellbeing of the State. ^ A similar idea 
inspired the special representation of the three es- 
tates of Lords, Clergy, and Commons, which grew up 
in the Middle Ages, and which played a great part in 
the early constitutional history of England, France, 
and Spain. The four orders of Nobles, Clergy, Bur- 
gesses, and Peasants were separately represented in 
Sweden up to 1866, and the same system still survives 
in the Constitution of Finland. In the Prussian Con- 
stitution of 1850 an attempt is made to maintain a 
balance of classes by dividing the electors ' of the first 
degree' into three different classes, according to the 
direct taxes they pay, and giving each class a separate 
and equal power of election. In the still more recent 
Constitution of Austria the electors are divided into 
four great classes — the large territorial proprietors, the 
towns, the chambers of commerce, and the rural com- 



1 See Grote's History^ iii. stitution is attributed to Servius 

118-21. Tullius, but probably acquired 

^ ' Ita nee prohibebatur quis- its most characteristic features 

quam jure suffragii, et is vale- much later. It was for some 

])at in suffragio plurimum, cujus time greatly abused by the first 

])lurimum intererat esse in op- class, who possessed the majo- 

tirao statu civitatum ' (Cicero, rity of centuries, and voted first. 
de Republican ii. 22) • This Con- 



266 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

mimes — and each category returns its own members to 
the Chamber of the Deputies. But it is evident that 
the present stream oi political tendency is not flowing 
in this direction, and it is remarkable that the legisla- 
tors who framed the Constitution for the German Em- 
pire did not follow the example of Prussia, but based 
the representative chamber on direct universal suffrage. 
It is now chiefly in the upper chambers that class repre- 
sentation may be found. 

The question, however, of proportionate representa- 
tion, or the representation of minorities, stands on a 
different basis from the representation of classes. It 
can hardly be contended that the substitution of a 
representation of the whole nation for a representation 
of a mere majority is contrary to democratic j^i'inciples. 
It is manifest that, under the existing system, multi- 
tudes of electors are in effect permanently disfranchised 
and unrepresented because they are in a permanent 
minority in the constituencies in which they live. The 
majority possesses not merely a preponderance, but a 
monopoly ; and in a constituency where three-fifths vote 
one way and two-fifths the other, the whole representa- 
tion is in the hands of the former. Where constitu- 
encies are very unequal in their magnitude it is quite 
possible that a majority of the representatives may be 
returned by a minority of the electors, as the minority 
in a large constituency will often outnumber the ma- 
jority in a small one. With equalised constituencies 
and widely extended suffrage another, but not less seri- 
ous, evil will prevail. A single class — the most nu- 
merous, but also the most ignorant — will generally 
exceed all others, and other classes in large numbers 
of constituencies will be wholly unrepresented. In 
such a state of things, the importance of providing 
some representation for minorities is extremely great. 



CH. III. PROPORTIONATE REPRESENTATION 267 

and it continually happens that the proportion of par- 
ties in the representation differs very widely from the 
proportion in the electorate. When two-thirds of a 
constituency vote for one party, and one-third for the 
other, it is obviously just that the majority should 
have two-thirds, and the minority one-third, of the 
representation. 

The importance of this question has been widely felt 
during the last few years in many countries, especially 
since the powerful chapter in which Mill discussed it. 
' In a really equal democracy/ he wrote, ' every or any 
section would be represented, not disproportionately, 
but proportionately. A majority of the electors would 
always have a majority of the representatives, but a 
minority of the electors would have a minority of the 
representatives. Man for man, they would be as fully 
represented as the majority. Unless they are, there is 
not equal government, but government of inequality 
and privilege, . . . contrary to the principles of de- 
mocracy, which professes equality as its very root and 
foundation.^' 

There are several methods by which this represen- 
tation of minorities may be obtained with more or less 
perfection. The most perfect is that which was first 
proposed by Mr. Hare in 1859. It has undergone 
several slight modifications, at the hands either of Mr. 
Hare or of his disciples ; but it will here be sufficient 
to state its principle in the simplest form. The legis- 
lator must first ascertain the number of voters who 
are entitled to return a member ; which is done by 
the easy process of dividing the number of voters in the 
kingdom, or in one portion of the kingdom, by the 
number of seats. Every candidate who can gain this 



Mill On Representative Government^ p. 133. 



268 DEMOCRACY ANT> LIBERTY ch. hi. 

nnmber of votes is to be elected, whether these votes 
come from his own or from other constituencies. It is 
proposed that each elector should have one vote, but 
should vote on a paper on which the candidate he pre- 
fers stands first, while the names of other candidates 
follow in the order of preference. If, when the paper 
is drawn, the candidate at the head of the list has al- 
ready obtained the requisite number of votes, the vote 
is to pass to the first of the succeeding candidates who 
is still deficient, ^o candidate is to be credited with a 
greater number of votes than is required for his elec- 
tion, and his superfluous votes are in this manner to be 
transferred to other candidates to make up their quota. 
And this transfer is to be made quite irrespectively of 
the locality for which they stand. 

It cannot, I think, be said that there is anything 
very mysterious or perplexing in this proceeding, 
though it would probably be some little time before 
the electors became accustomed to it, and though it 
would impose some difficulties of detail and some rather 
complicated calculations upon the officials who worked 
it. An element of chance would always remain, as the 
direction of the votes would partly depend upon the 
order in Avhich the papers were drawn ; and it would 
probably be found impossible to adapt the system to 
bye-elections, which might continue as at present. If 
all the seats were not filled by candidates who had ob- 
tained the requisite number of votes, those who ap- 
proximated most nearly to the number might be 
chosen to fill the vacancies. The plan is not put for- 
ward as absolutely perfect, but it is contended for it 
that it would give at every general election a far more 
accurate representation of the wishes of the electorate 
than our present system ; that it would utilise a great 
number of votes which are now lost or wasted ; that it 



CH. III. HARE'S SYSTEM 269 

would rekindle political life among large classes who 
are at present in a hopeless minority in their consti- 
tuencies ; that it would diminish the oscillations of 
politics, by preventing the wholly disproportionate 
change of power that so often follows a slight shifting 
in the electorate ; and that it would greatly improve 
the intellectual level of the House of Commons, by 
making it the interest of party managers to select can- 
didates of acknowledged eminence, and by giving such 
candidates far greater chances of success. It has been 
said that it would destroy local representation ; but it 
is answered that a strong local candidate would usually 
have most chance of obtaining the required number of 
votes, and that it would be mainly the voters who are 
in a minority in their constituency, and are now vir- 
tually disfranchised, who would transfer their votes. 
On the great majority of papers a local candidate 
would almost certainly head the list. It is urged that 
the system realises more perfectly than any other the 
democratic principle of absolute equality, while it at 
the same time secures the representation of all consider- 
able minorities. Under no other system would the 
representative chamber reflect so truly, in their due 
numerical proportion, the various classes, interests, 
and opinions of the nation. 

There have been, as I have said, several slight modi- 
fications of this system — usually, I think, not im- 
provements. M. de Girardin has urged that all local 
constituencies should be abolished, and that the whole 
country should be treated as one great constituency. 
Another proposal is, that each candidate should have a 
right to have the votes for him that are in excess of 
those required for his election transferred to some 
other candidate whom he had previously named. I do 
not think that, if Mr, Harem's system were adopted. 



270 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

there would be any great difficulty in working it, and 
it would probably materially improve the Constitution ; 
but it is very doubtful whether, in a democratic age, 
public opinion would ever demand with sufficient per- 
sistence a representation of minorities, or whether the 
British nation could ever be induced to adopt a system 
which departs so widely from its traditional forms and 
habits. It is remarkable, however, that a system very 
like that of Mr. Hare had, without his knowledge, 
been adopted on a small scale in Denmark as early as 
1855. It was due to a distinguished statesman named 
Andreae, who was also a distinguished mathematician ; 
and, with some modifications and restrictions, it still 
continues.' 

Two other methods have been proposed for giving 
representation to minorities which, though much less 
perfect than the plan of Mr. Hare, diverge much less 
from the current notions about representation. One 
is the system of three-cornered constituencies — that is, 
of constituencies returning three members, in which 
every elector has only a right to two votes, and in 
which a minority exceeding a third could, in conse- 
quence, secure one representative. This system was 
proposed by Lord John Russell in 1854, but was not 
received with favour. In 1867 the House of Lords, 
on the motion of Lord Cairns, introduced it into the 
Reform Bill, and it became law, but without any wide 
redistribution of seats. If the three-cornered system 
had been made general, it would probably have been 
readily accepted, and soon been looked upon as na- 
tural ; but, being applied only to thirteen constituen- 



^ See La Representation Fro- presentation Proportionnelle 
portionnelle^ published by the (Paris, 1888), pp. 338-66. 
Societe pour I'fitude de la Re- 



CH. III. THE REFORM BILL OF 1885 271 

cies^ it was an exceptional things and not popular. 
Birmingham and one or two other great towns resented 
the addition of a third member^ whose vote in a party 
division might counteract that of one of the two rep- 
resentatives they already possessed;, and therefore 
diminish instead of increase their political strength. 
In cases where the majority equalled or slightly ex- 
ceeded two-thirds much difficult and expensive organi- 
sation was required to enable it to retain the three 
seats to which, according to its numbers, it was en- 
titled. Bright, who himself sat for Birmingham, 
opposed the system with great bitterness and persis- 
tence, and the Eadical party were generally hostile to 
it. It was accordingly abolished in the Keform Bill of 
1885, which broke up the great majority of the con- 
stituencies into smaller divisions, each retaining one 
member. It was contended that such subdivision im- 
proved the chances of a minority ; but the case of 
Ireland abundantly shows how little reliance can be 
placed on this security,^ and the adoption of such seats 
greatly added to the difficulty of establishing any gene- 
ral system of minority representation. 

' Nothing is more remarkable,^ writes Mr. Hare in 
speaking of this episode, ' than that the attempts to 
retrace the steps that have been made towards render- 
ing the representative bodies comprehensive, and not 
exclusive in their character, should all emanate from 
members of the Liberal party, which is understood to 
insist upon equality in political freedom, without par- 
tiality in favour of person or place. The abolition of 
the restricted vote was put forward as a pretended vin- 
dication of electoral rights, while, by delivering the 



^ See on this subject an admirable pamphlet by Mr. Aubrey de 
Vere, called Ireland arid PropoHional Representation (1885). 



272 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

electoral power of every comninnity over to the majo- 
rity, it would practically disfranchise a third, or even 
more, of the electors/^ 

The other system is that of the cumulative vote, by 
which, in a constituency returning three or more 
members, each elector has a right to as many votes as 
there are members, and may either distribute them, or 
concentrate them, if he pleases, on a single candidate. 
This method is more likely to be popular than the 
limited vote, as it gives a privilege instead of imposing 
a restriction, and it would undoubtedly be effectual in 
enabling any considerable minority to return a mem- 
ber. It was strongly, but unsuccessfully, advocated 
by Mr. Lowe in 1867, and it was introduced into the 
school board elections in 1870. Various inequalities 
and anomalies have been pointed out in its working, 
but, on the whole, it is undoubtedly efficacious in giv- 
ing minorities a real representation. It is manifest, 
however, that it can only be really useful in constitu- 
encies represented by more than two members. 

These various methods are attempts to attain an end 
which was, on the whole, roughly though unsystemati- 
cally attained under the older methods of represen- 
tation. Various other devices have been proposed, 
which, however, have at present no chance of being 
accepted. Perhaps the only exception is a low educa- 
tional qualification, obliging the electors at least to be 
able to read and write. Such a qualification was much 
recommended by Mill, and it has passed into several 
democratic constitutions. It was first introduced in 
the French Eevolutionary Constitution of 1795, but it 
was not re^^roduced in any of the subsequent French 
constitutions. It exists, however, in Portugal, Italy, 



Hare On the Election of Representatives^ 4th ed. p. 14. 



CH. III. PLURAL VOTING 273 

and Eoumania^ and in some of the republics of South 
America.^ The most recent and most extensive in- 
stance of the adoption of plural voting has been in the 
new Constitution of Belgium. The electors are di- 
vided into three classes. One vote is given to all male 
persons above twenty-five years of age who have resided 
for a year in one constituency ; an additional vote is 
given to married men and widowers^ of not less than 
thirty-five years^ with families, paying a personal tax 
of five francs to the State on the buildings they in- 
habit, and also to the owners of property of a certain 
amount ; while a third and smaller class, formed out 
of men who have received a higher education, filled a 
public function, or belonged to a learned profession, 
are entitled to three votes. In this very democratic 
constitution a form of compulsion is introduced which 
does not, I believe, exist in any other contemporary 
constitution. All voters who have not obtained a 
special exemption from a judge are compelled to vote, 
and are liable to a fine if they abstain. 

It is too soon to form a conclusive opinion on either 
the value or the permanence of the Belgian system of 
plural voting, incorporated in an extremely democratic 
constitution. It is especially interesting to English 
observers, as being an attempt to carry out in some 
measure one of the favourite ideas of Mill. 

Mill was not insensible to the danger and injustice of 
dissociating the power of voting taxes from the neces- 
sity of paying them, and to the fact that unqualified 
universal suffrage leads plainly and rapidly to this 
form of robbery. Universal suffrage he valued in the 
highest degree as a system of education, and he was 
quite prepared, for educational purposes, to give the 



' Revue de Droit Tniernational^ xxiv. 97. 
VOL. I. 18 



274 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

most incompetent classes in the community an enor- 
mous power of determining the vital interests of the 
Empire^ regulating the industry, and disposing of the 
property of their neighbours. He imagined that he 
could mitigate or avert the danger by two expedients. 
One was to extend direct taxation to the very lowest 
class, imposing a small annual tax in the form of capi- 
tation on every grown person in the community. If 
this direct tax could be made to rise or fall with the 
gross expenditure of the country, he believed that 
every elector would feel himself directly interested in 
wise and economical administration. Paupers and 
bankrupts, and those who had not paid their taxes, 
were to be excluded from the suffrage. Is it a rash 
thing to say that the very first measure of a Eadical 
Chancellor of the Exchequer who desired to win a 
doubtful election under the system of universal suffrage 
would be to abolish this capitation tax ? 

The other expedient was a very great extension of 
plural voting. Every man and every woman, accord- 
ing to Mill, should have a vote, but in order to correct 
the great dangers of class legislation and a too low 
standard of political intelligence, large classes should 
be strengthened by a plurality of votes. Employers of 
labour, foremen, labourers in the more skilled trades, 
bankers, merchants, and manufacturers, might all be 
given two or more votes. Similar or greater advan- 
tages might be given to the members of the liberal 
professions, to graduates of universities, to those who 
had passed through different kinds of open examina- 
tion. The old system, according to whicli those who 
possessed property in different constituencies had a 
vote in each, should be preserved, although it was an 
imperfect one ; but it should be considerably extended. 
' In any future Reform Bill which lowers greatly the 



CH. III. PLURAL VOTING 275 

pecuniary conditions of the suffrage it might be a wise 
provision to allow all graduates of universities, all 
persons who had passed creditably through the higher 
schools, all members of the liberal professions, and 
perhaps some others, to be registered specifically in 
these characters, and to give their votes as such in any 
constituency in which they choose to register, retain- 
ing, in addition, their votes as simple citizens in the 
localities in which they reside/ ^ 

It is sufficiently obvious how utterly opposed all 
these views are to the predominating tendency of mo- 
dern English Eadicalism, with its watchword of one 
man, one vote, and its steadily successful efforts to 
place the property and the liberty of the Empire under 
the complete dominion of the poorest and the most 
ignorant. In the first cast of the Reform Bill of 1867 
Disraeli introduced a number of qualifications very 
much in the spirit of those which had been advocated 
by Mill. While enormously extending and lowering 
the suffrage connected with the ownership and occupa- 
tion of property, he proposed to confer a number of 
votes of another description. There was an educa- 
tional franchise, to be conferred on all graduates of 
universities, on all male persons who had passed at any 
senior middle-class examination of any university of 
the United Kingdom, on all priests and deacons of the 
Established Church, all ministers of other denomi- 
nations, all barristers, pleaders, attorneys, medical men, 
or certificated schoolmasters. There was a pecuniary 
franchise, to belong to every man who, during the 
preceding two years, had a balance of not less than 
fifty pounds in a savings bank, or in the Bank of 
England, or in any parliamentary stock, or who paid 



Mill On Representative Government., pp. 165-71. 



276 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

twenty shillings for assessed taxes or income-tax ; and 
there was a clause enabling voters in a borough to be 
registered on two different qualifications, and to exer- 
cise in consequence a dual vote. 

It was intended by these franchises to qualify the 
ascendency of mere numbers by strengthening in the 
electorate intelligence, education, property, and fru- 
gality. All such attempts, however, were opposed by 
Mr. Gladstone and his followers, and the new fran- 
chises were very lightly abandoned by their author. 
They were usually condemned and ridiculed as "^ fancy 
franchises ' — a curious instance of the manner in which, 
in English politics, a nickname that is neither very 
witty nor very descriptive can be made to take the 
place of serious argument. 

No such efforts to improve the electorate are now 
likely to obtain even a respectful hearing. Whether, 
however, they have passed for ever is another question. 
When the present evils infecting our parliamentary 
system have grown still graver ; when a democratic 
House, more and more broken up into small groups, 
more and more governed by sectional or interested 
motives, shall have shown itself evidently incompetent 
to conduct the business of the country with honour, 
efficiency, and safety ; when public opinion has learnt 
more fully the enormous danger to national prosperity, 
as well as individual happiness, of dissociating power 
from property, and giving the many an unlimited 
right of confiscating by taxation the possessions of the 
few, some great reconstruction of government is sure 
to be demanded. Fifty, or even twenty-five years 
hence, the current of political opinion in England 
may be as different from that of our own day as con- 
temporary political tendencies are different from those 
in the generation of our fathers. Expedients and ar- 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM 277 

guments that are now dismissed with contempt may 
then revive, and play no small part in the politics of 
the future. 

One great possible constitutional change, very new 
to English public opinion, has risen with remarkable 
rapidity into prominence in the last few years, and is 
perhaps destined hereafter to have an extensive influ- 
ence. I mean the Swiss Referendum. Rousseau, in 
his ' Contrat Social,^ maintained that all laws ought to 
be voted by universal male suffrage, and that no law 
which had not received this direct sanction was bind- 
ing. It is probable that in this, as in some other parts 
of his political philosophy, he was much influenced by 
his Swiss experience, for the old form of government 
known as the Landsgemeinde, according to which all 
the adult males assemble twice a year to vote their laws 
and elect their functionaries by universal suffrage, ex- 
isted widely in his time, both in the town governments 
and the canton governments of Switzerland. It is a 
form of government which has played a great part in 
the early history of mankind, but it is manifestly un- 
suited to wide areas and large populations. It was 
abolished in our own century in Zug and in Schwytz, 
but it may still be seen in ITri, Unterwalden, Appen- 
zell, and Glarus. The French Convention, in 1793, 
attempted to carry out the doctrine of Rousseau by in- 
troducing into its Constitution a provision that, in case 
a certain proportion of the electors desired it, there 
should be a popular vote upon every law ; and although 
this Constitution was never put into force, the same 
doctrine was, as we have seen, in some degree carried 
out in the shape of plebiscites directly sanctioning 
several changes of government. 

In Switzerland it has taken the form of the Refe- 
rendum, which appears to have grown out of the Lands- 



278 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

gemeinde. It became a regular and permanent element 
in Swiss government after the French Revolution of 
1830, and in recent times it has been largely extended. 
The Referendnm is not intended as a substitute for 
representative government, but as a final court of ap- 
peal, giving the electors, by a direct vote, the right of 
veto or ratification upon measures which had already 
p/ passed the legislative chambers. For many years it 
was confined to the separate cantons, and it took differ- 
ent forms. Sometimes it was restricted to new taxes 
and changes in the constitutions of the cantons. In 
several cantons it is chiefly optional, taking place only 
when a specified number of electors demand it. In 
other cantons it is compulsor}^, the constitution pro- 
viding that all laws passed by the representative body 
must be submitted to a direct popular vote in order to 
acquire validity. In all the cantons there is now a 
compulsory Referendum on every proposition to alter 
the cantonal constitution, and in many cantons there is 
a compulsory Referendum on every expenditure of pub- 
lic money, beyond a certain specified sum, varying ac- 
cording to their extent and population. The Catholic 
canton of Fribourg is now the only one which confines 
it to questions of constitutional revision. 

The Referendum was introduced into the Federal 
system by the Constitution of 1848, but it was only 
made applicable to the single case of constitutional re- 
vision. Every change in the Constitution made by the 
Federal Legislature required the ratification of a direct 
popular vote. In the Constitution of 1874, however, the 
province of the Referendum was largely extended, for 
it was provided that all Federal laws, as well as general 
Federal decrees Avhich w^ere not of an urgent nature, 
should be submitted to the 23opular vote on the demand 
of 30,000 qualified voters or of eight cantons. A re- 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM 279 

markable provision was also inserted in this Constitu- 
tion giving the people some right of initiative, as well 
as ratification, in matters of constitutional revision. If 
50,000 voters demanded it, a popular vote must be 
taken on the question whether the Constitution should 
be revised ; and, if it was in favour of revision, the two 
Federal Councils were renewed for the purpose of un- 
dertaking the task. A revision of the Constitution 
which was carried in 1891 went much further. It en- 
titled 50,000 voters to obtain a popular vote which 
might decree directly the introduction of a new article, 
or the abolition or modification of an old article of the 
Helvetic Constitution.^ In all these ways the nation 
directly intervenes to dictate or to make its own laws, 
and the power of the representative bodies is to that 
extent abridged. A corresponding tendency to give the 
popular vote an initiative in legislation has appeared in 
some of the separate cantons. 

Laveleye has collected an interesting series of exam- 
ples of the manner in which this power has been used.^ 
On the whole the popular vote, when it extends over 
the entire Confederation, more frequently negatives 
than ratifies the measures submitted to it. The ten- 
dencies which it most strongly shows are a dislike to 
large expenditure, a dislike to centralisation, a dislike 
to violent innovation. The Referendum is more fre- 
quently employed in cantonal than in Federal legislation. 
Between the enactment of the Constitution of 1874 and 
July 1891 about 130 laws passed through the Federal 
Chamber. Of these, sixteen only, exclusive of some 
constitutional modifications, were submitted to the 



' Dareste, Constitutions Mo- See, too, the chapter on the 

dernes^ ii. 658. Swiss Referendum in Oberholt- 

2 Laveleye, Le Gouvernement zer's Referendum in America^ 

dans la Democratie^ ii. 146-70. pp. 10-14. 



280 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

popular vote, and, of these sixteen, eleven were rejected. 
The chief charges that have been brought against the 
popular vote are, that it refuses adequate stipends to 
public servants, and is very niggardly in providing for 
works of public utility, esj^ecially when they relate to 
interests that are not easily appreciated by agricultural 
peasants. On the whole, it has been decidedly con- 
servative, though there have been a few exceptions. 
It sanctioned the severely graduated taxation which 
exists in some of the Swiss cantons ; but in Xeuchatel 
the system of graduated taxation, having been accepted 
by the Grand Council, was rejected by the Referendum, 
and the same thing has happened still more recently in 
the canton of Berne. ^ One remarkable vote, which was 
taken in 1879, restored to the different cantons the 
power of introducing capital punishment into their 
criminal codes, which had been taken from them by 
the Constitution of 1874. A somewhat curious recent 
vote has prohibited the Jews from killing their cattle in 
the way prescribed by their law. In this case the anti- 
Semitic feeling and a feeling of what was supposed to 
be humanity to animals probably blended, though in 
very unequal proportions. 

The popularity of the Referendum in Switzerland is 
clearly shown by the rapidity with which its scope has 
been extended. There is a ver}^ remarkable movement 
of the same kind in America, where in State politics 



^ Seethe Rep oy-t on Graduated that -witnessed the rejection of 

Taxation in Switzerland pre- the most important measure 

sented to the Foreign Office in ^vhich it had passed in the pre- 

1802, p. 15. Mr. Buchanan, vious session of the Cantonal 

the author of this Report, men- Grand Council.' This shows 

tions the remarkahle fact that how clearly the Referendum 

in this canton ' the Radical party vote can he kept separate from 

was returned to power by a very party questions. 
large majority on the same day 



CH. iJi. THE REFERENDUM IN AMERICA 281 

the tendency runs strongly in favour of a substitution 
of direct popular legislation for legislation through the 
medium of representative bodies. Every change in a 
State Government is now made by summoning a con- 
vention for that express purpose^ and the revision de- 
termined on by this convention must be sanctioned by 
a direct popular vote. In this respect^ therefore, the 
State constitutions of the United States rest on ex- 
actly the same basis as the cantonal governments of 
Switzerland, and the same system has been widely ex- 
tended to various forms of municipal and county go- 
vernment. In many State constitutions it is prescribed 
that the State capital can only be changed by a popular 
vote, and in one or two constitutions the same restric- 
tion applies to transfers of great local institutions. In 
a large number of cases, as I have already noticed, the 
extreme corruption of the State legislatures has led the 
people to introduce clauses into their State constitu- 
tions limiting strictly the power of the legislatures to 
impose taxes or incur debts, and obliging them to sub- 
mit all expenditure beyond the assigned limits to a 
direct popular vote. 

This is, ho ,v^ever, only a small part of the legislation 
which is now carried by direct popular vote. Conven- 
tions summoned for the purpose of amending the State 
constitutions have taken the largest possible view of 
their powers : they have laid down rules relating not 
only to organic constitutional change, but to every im- 
portant subject of legislation, withdrawing those sub- 
jects wholly, or partially, from the competency of the 
State legislatures, and every enactment made by these 
conventions requires for its validity the ratification of 
a direct popular vote. 

This movement is but little known in England, and 
although I have already referred to it in another con- 



282 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

nection^ it is sufficiently important to warrant some 
repetition. In England, a large class of politicians are^ 
now preaching a mnltiplication of small democratic 
local legislatures as tlie true efflorescence and perfec- 
tion of democracy. In America, no fact is more clearly 
established than that such legislatures almost invari- 
ably fall into the hands of caucuses, wirepullers, and 
professional politicians, and become centres of jobbing 
and corruption. One of the main tasks of the best 
American politicians has, of late years, been to with- 
draw^ gradually the greater part of legislation from the 
influence of these bodies, and to entrust it to conven- 
tions specially elected for a special purpose, and em- 
powered to pass particular laws, subject to direct 
ratification by a popular vote. I can here hardly do 
better than to quote at some length the American 
wTiter who has recently treated this subject with the 
fullest knowledge and detail. ' It is very usual/ writes 
Mr. Oberholtzer, ' for conventions in late years, at the 
time of submitting constitutions, to submit special 
articles or sections of articles for separate consideration 
by the people. These pertain to subjects upon which 
there is likely to be much ]3ublic feeling. . . . Sub- 
jects so treated by the conventions have been slavery, 
woman's suffrage, the prohibition of the liquor traffic, 
the location of state capitals, &c. . . . There has been 
within recent times a radical change in our ideas in 
regard to State constitutions, and our conceptions as to 
what matters are suitable for a place in these instru- 
ments. At the beginning they were, as constitutions 
are supposed to be, statements of the fundamentals 
of government. . . . Now, however, very different 
constitutional standards obtain, and in the States of 
every section of the country the same tendency is 
visible, until we have to-day come to a point when our 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM IN AMERICA 283 

State constitutions are nothing short of codes of laws 
giving instruction to the Legislature and the other 
agents of Grovernment on nearly every subject of gene- 
ral public concern, and often stating the methods 
which shall be used in legislating, if not, indeed, actu- 
ally legislating, on local questions. . . . The constitu- 
tions have been the repositories for much of the 
legislation which before was left to be enacted by the 
legislatures.^ ' 

This writer then proceeds to show how the State 
constitutions as amended by the conventions now make 
pamphlets of from fifty to seventy-five pages long, in- 
cluding almost all matters of education, taxation, 
expenditure, and local administration ; the organisa- 
tion and regulation of the railroads, of the militia, of 
the trade in drink, of the penal and reformatory in- 
stitutions ; clauses prohibiting lotteries^ prize fights, 
or duels, establishing a legal day's work, even defining 
the relations of husbands and wives, and debtors and 
creditors. 

All these subjects are withdrawn from the province 
of the State legislature, and are dealt with by conven- 
tions ratified by a direct popular vote. ' Indeed,' con- 
tinues our writer, ' there are now few matters which 
are subjects for legislation at all that, according to the 
new conception of a constitution, may not be dealt with 
by the conventions. It is only after considering the 
nature of this new conception that the Referendum as 
exemplified in America is seen to have its closest like- 
ness to the institution as it exists to-day in Switzerland.' 

' Side by side with this movement to make codes of 
laws of our constitutions, and to restrict in many ways 



^ Oberholtzer, The Referendum in America^ pp. 38-44 (Philadel- 
phia, 1893). 



284: DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. m. 

the powers of the State legislatures, has grown up a 
movement tending directly to the almost entire aboli- 
tion of these bodies. In nearly all the States, by the 
development of the last few years, the conventions 
have substituted biennial for annual legislative ses- 
sions. These sessions, now being held only half as 
often, are further limited so that they may not extend 
over more than a certain number of days. . . . Those 
States which still retain the system of annual sessions 
— as, for instance, New York and 'New Jersey — con- 
stantly find cause for dissatisfaction, and the feeling of 
distrust for these bodies is taking deeper hold of the 
people every year. The feeling, indeed, has reached a 
conviction nearly everywhere that the powers of the 
legislatures should be still further curtailed, and in 
but one State — Georgia — has there been shown any in- 
clination to return to original principles." 

^ With the change in the character of the constitu- 
tions, has of necessity come a change in the character 
of constitutional amendments. Statute legislation, of 
late years, has been more and more disguised in these 
amendments, and sent to the Referendum. Xo better 
evidence of this is to be found than in the frequency 
of amendments to prohibit the manufacture and traffic 
in intoxicating liquors, a subject as far removed as any 
well could be from the original idea as to a proper 
matter for treatment in a constitution. Of these 
elections, in nine years there were nineteen, begin- 
ning with Kansas, Nov. 2, 1880, and closing with 
Connecticut, Oct. 7, 1889.'^ 

These passages are, I think, very significant, as 



' Oherholtzer, The Referendum on Direct Legislation by the 
in America^ pp. 4o-4G. See, People, The American Com- 
too, the chapter of Mr. Bryce monicealth^ ii. 67-82. 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM 285 

shoAving certain tendencies of democracy which are 
as yet little recognised in England, but which are 
probably destined to contribute largely towards mould- 
ing the governments of the future. I must refer my 
reader to the curious work which I am citing for 
detailed evidence of the many instances in which, in 
different States of the American Eej^ublic, local mea- 
sures about taxation and debt, changes in the State 
territorial boundaries, jurisdiction, or municipal ar- 
rangements, or in the suffrage, the system of repre- 
sentation, or the liquor laws, have been settled by a direct 
popular vote of the same character as the Swiss Ee- 
ferendum. This system appears to have almost wholly 
arisen in America since 1850,^ and it has grown rapidly 
in public favour. It has been the subject of many, 
and sometimes conflicting, decisions in the law courts, 
but in the great majority of States it has obtained a 
firm legal footing, and it is transforming the whole 
character of State government. 

It is not surprising that the Referendum is now begin- 
ning seriously to occupy those political thinkers who can 
look beyond the contests of the hour and the immediate 
interests of a party. Laveleye has devoted much atten- 
tion to it,'* and it was much discussed in Belgium dur- 
ing the recent democratic revision of the Constitution. 
It was proposed, as a safeguard against the dangers to 
be feared from that great and sudden change, that the 
King should possess the power of submitting measures 
which had passed through the Chambers to a direct 
popular vote in the form of a Eeferendum. The pro- 
posal was (as I think, unfortunately) defeated, but 
there have been several minor indications of its growing 



1 Oberholtzer, p. 105. ment dans la Democraiics ii. 

2 Laveleye, Le Gouverne- 169-70. 



286 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

popularity. The Referendum has, in more than one 
case, been employed in Belgium in questions of muni- 
cipal government. The vote which is required in 
England for the establishment in any borough of a free 
library supported by the rates, and the system of local 
option so strenuously advocated by many temperance 
reformers, and which a growing party desires to apply 
to the hours of labour in different trades, belong to this 
category. The Eeferendum now occupies a prominent 
place in the programme of the Labour party in Aus- 
tralia, and in most of the Socialist programmes in 
Europe, while its incorporation in the British Consti- 
tution has of late years found several advocates of a 
very different order of opinion, and has been supported 
by the brilliant pen and by the great authority of Pro- 
fessor Dicey. ^ 

It is a question which is indeed well worthy of seri- 
ous consideration. If such a system could be made to 
work, it would almost certainly do something to cor- 
rect, by an eminently democratic method, democratic 
evils thit are threatening grave calamities to the Em- 
pire. It would make it possible to introduce into 
England that distinction between constitutional ques- 
tions and ordinary legislation which in America and in 
nearly all Continental countries not only exists, but is 
maintained and fortified by the most stringent pro- 
visions. In the days when the balance of power be- 
tween tlie different elements in the Constitution was 
still unimpaired, when the strongly organised conser- 
vative influences of class and property opposed an 



' See an admirable article by been also ably discussed in the 

Professor Dicey on this subject National Revieiv for February* 

in the Contemporary Review^ March, and April 1894. 
April 1890. The subject has 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM 287 

insuperable barrier to revolutionary change^ snch a 
distinction might be safely dispensed with. In the 
conditions of the present da}^, no serious thinker can 
fail to perceive the enormous danger of placing the 
essential elements of tlie Constitution at the mercy of 
a simple majority of a single Parliament^ a majority, 
perhaps, composed of heterogeneous and discordant 
fractions, combined for a party purpose, and not larger 
than is required to pass a Bill for regulating music- 
halls or protecting sea-birds^ eggs. 

The Referendum, in its first and most universal ap- 
plication, is intended to prevent this evil by making it 
impossible to carry constitutional changes without the 
direct and deliberate assent of the people. It would also 
have the immense advantage of disentangling issues, 
separating one great question from the many minor 
questions with which it may be mixed. Confused or 
blended issues are among the gravest political dangers 
of our time. Revolutionary and predatory measures 
are much less likely to be carried on their merits than 
because their proposers have obtained a majority by 
joining with them a sufficient number of other mea- 
sures appealing to different sections of the electorate. 
With the multiplication of groups this evil is con- 
stantly increasing, and it is in this direction that many 
dangerous politicians are mainly working. In the 
House of Commons, a measure may often be carried 
which would never have had a chance of success if the 
members could vote on their own conviction of its 
merits ; if they could vote by ballot ; if they could 
vote as they thought best, without destroying a minis- 
try, or endangering some wholly different measure 
which stood lower down in the ministerial programme. 
Motives of the same kind, absolutely distinct from an 
approval or disapproval of one great measure, govern the 



288 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

votes of the electorate^ and largely determine the course 
of parties and legislation. It would be a great gain to 
English politics if a capital question could be decided 
by the electorate on its own merits^ on a direct and sim- 
ple issue. If the nation is moving towards revolution^ 
it should at least do so with its eyes open^ and with a 
clear and deliberate intention. 

It would probably be found that such a vote would 
prove the most powerful bulwark against violent and 
dishonest change. It would bring into action the 
opinion of the great silent classes of the community, 
and reduce to their true proportions many movements 
to which party combinations or noisy agitations have 
given a wholly factitious prominence. It might restore 
in another form something of the old balanced Consti- 
tution, which has now so nearly passed away. The 
transcendently important function of the House of 
Lords in restraining the despotism of the Commons, 
and referring great changes to the adjudication of the 
people, is now rarely exercised and violently assailed. 
If, when the House of Lords differed on a question of 
grave national importance from the Commons, it pos- 
sessed, or, if possessing, it would exercise, the power of 
submitting that question to the direct vote of the elec- 
torate, the most skilful demagogue would find it difficult 
to persuade the people that it was tramiDling on their 
rights. If the powder of insisting on a Referendum 
was placed, as in Switzerland, in the hands of a large 
body of voters, it would still form a counterpoise and 
a check of the most important kind. 

It is contended for it that it would not only extri- 
cate one capital measure from the crowd of minor 
measures with which it is associated, but would also 
lift it above the dominion of party, and thus greatly 
increase the probability of its representing the genuine 



Cir. III. THE REFERENDUM 289 

wishes of the electorate. It would enable the nation 
to reject a measure which it dislikes^ without destroy- 
ing a ministry of w^hich it approves. The vote would 
not be on the general policy of the Government. It 
would be exclusively on the merits of a single measure, 
and it would leave the ministerial majority in the 
House of Commons unchanged. Few persons will 
doubt that a measure brought in this manner before 
the electorate would be voted on with a much fuller 
consideration and a much more serious sense of re- 
sponsibility than if it came before them mixed up with 
a crowd of other measures, and inseparably connected 
with a party issue, xit a general election, the great 
majority of votes are given for a party or a statesman, 
and the real question is, which side should rule the 
country. By the Eeferendum the electorate can give 
its deliberate opinion, not upon men, but upon mea- 
sures, and can reject a measure without placing the 
Government of the country into other hands. 

It is often said that there are large classes of ques- 
tions on which such a popular opinion could be of 
little worth. To this I have no difficulty in subscrib- 
ing. It is very doubtful whether a really popular vote 
would have ratified the Toleration Act in the seven- 
teenth century, or the abolition of the capital punish- 
ment of witches in the eighteenth century, or Catholic 
Emancipation in the nineteenth century, or a crowd of 
other measures that might be enumerated. It is now, 
however, too late to urge such an argument. De- 
mocracy has been crowned king. The voice of the 
multitude is the ultimate court of appeal, and the right 
of independent judgment, which was once claimed for 
the members of Parliament, is now almost wholly dis- 
carded. If the electorate is to judge policies, it is 
surely less likely to err if it judges them on a clear 

VOL. I. 19 



290 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

and distinct issue. In sueh a case it is most likely to 
act independently, and not at the dictation of party 
wirepullers. It is to be remembered, too, that the 
Eeferendum is not intended as a substitute for repre- 
sentative government. All the advantages of parlia- 
mentary debate would still remain. Policies wonld not 
be thrown before the electorate in a crude, undigested, 
undeveloped state. All measures would still pass 
through Parliament, and the great majority would be 
finally decided by Parliament. It would only be in a 
few cases, after a measure had been thoroughly dis- 
cussed in all its bearings, after the two Houses had 
given their judgment, that the nation would be called 
to adjudicate. The Referendum would be an appeal 
from a party majority, probably made up of discordant 
gi'oups, to the genuine opinion of the country. It 
would be an appeal on a question which had been 
thoroughly examined, and on which the nation had 
every means of arriving at a conclusion. It would be 
a clear and decisive verdict on a matter on which the 
two branches of the Legislature had differed. 

It is argued against the Referendum that many of 
the differences between the two Houses are differences 
not of principle, but of detail. A Bill is before Parlia- 
ment on the general policy of which both parties and 
both Houses are agreed, but one clause or amendment, 
dealing with a subsidiary part, produces an irreconcila- 
ble difference. The jDopular vote, it has been said, 
would be an instrument wholly unfit to discriminate 
between the portion of a Bill that should be preserved 
and the part that should be rejected. I do not, how- 
ever, think that there is much weight in this argu- 
ment. After all discussions of details, a Bill, if it is 
to become law, must now pass through its third read- 
ing, and be accepted or rejected as a whole by a single 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM 291 

vote. All that is proposed by the Eeferendum is, that 
there should be one more step before its enactment. 
If the House of Lords objected essentially to some Bill 
which the House of Commons had more than once 
adopted, it might pass that Bill with the addition of a 
clause providing that it should not become law until it 
had been ratified by a direct popular vote. If the two 
Houses, agreeing upon the general merits of a Bill, 
differed irreconcilably upon one clause, instead of the 
Bill being wholly lost the Houses might agree that it 
should be passed in one or other form with a similar 
addition. By this simple method the Eeferendum 
might be put in action, and as the appeal would be to 
the existing electorate, no insuperable difficulties of 
machinery would be likely to arise. 

Another objection is, that the Eeferendum would 
have the effect of lowering the authority of the House 
of Commons, which is now, in effect, the supreme 
legislative authority in the Empire. This is undoubt- 
edly true, and, in my own judgment, it would be one 
of its great merits. The old saying of Burghley, that 
^ England never can be ruined but by her Parliament,' 
was never more true than at the present time, and the 
uncontrolled, unbalanced authority of a single repre- 
sentative body constituted like our own seems to me 
one of tlie gravest dangers to the Empire. In our age 
we must mainly look to democracy for a remedy. Ac- 
cording to the theories which now prevail, the House 
of Commons has absolutely no right as against its elec- 
tors, and it is to the electors that the Eeferendum 
would transfer, in a far more efficient manner than at 
present, the supreme authority in legislation. If the 
House of Commons moves during the next quarter of 
a century as rapidly on the path of discredit as it has 
done during the quarter of a century that has passed. 



292 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

it is not likely that many voices would be found to 
echo this objection. 

The foregoing arguments seem to me, at least, to 
show that the Referendum is not a question to be 
lightly dismissed. It might furnish a remedy for great 
and growing evils which it is very difficult to cure, and 
it w^ould do so in a way which is in full accordance with 
the democratic spirit of the time. Further than this 
I should not venture to go. To carry out successfully 
a scheme so widely diverging from old English modes 
of thought, to foresee and guard against the possible 
evils connected with it, would need the experience 
and discussion of many minds. It is obviously much 
easier to apply such a system to a small and sparse 
population like that of Switzerland, than to a dense 
population like our own ; and the ascendency of party 
has so long been supreme in England that it is not 
likely that the Referendum could withdraw questions 
wholly from its empire. It is probable that the vote 
would often be taken under the glamour of a great 
name ; its result would be looked upon as a party 
triumph, and for some time it would not be easy to 
persuade the British public that a ministry should re- 
main in power when its capital measure had been de- 
feated. The experience, however, of Switzerland and 
America shows that, when the Referendum takes root 
in a country, it takes political questions, to an immense 
degree, out of the hands of wirepullers, and makes it 
possible to decide them mainly, though perhaps not 
wholly, on their merits, without producing a change of 
government or of party predominance. 

Difficulties arising from both Houses of Parliament 
would, no doubt, have to be encountered. The House 
of Commons would naturally dislike to surrender any 
part of its power, even into the hands of its masters. 



CH. III. THE REFERENDUM 293 

The House of Lords, as at present constituted, is 
viewed with such suspicion by large classes that they 
would object to a measure which might increase its 
power, even though that increase was wholly derived 
from association with the most extreme form of demo- 
cracy. The great and pressing question of the reform 
of the Upper House would probably have to precede 
the adoption of the Referendum. 

It seems to me also clear, that in a country like Eng- 
land the Referendum could never become an habitual 
agent in legislation. Perpetual popular votes would be 
an intolerable nuisance. To foreign politics the Refe- 
rendum would be very inapplicable, and in home poli- 
tics it ought only to be employed on rare and grave 
occasions. It should be restricted to constitutional 
questions altering the disposition of power in the State, 
with, perhaps, the addition of important questions on 
which, during more than one Parliament, the two 
Houses of the Legislature had differed. 

Within these limits it appears to me full of promise, 
and it is to be hoped that political thinkers may keep 
their minds open upon the subject. For some con- 
siderable time to come all questions are likely to be sub- 
mitted to the adjudication of the greatest number, and 
statesmen must accept the fact, and endeavour to make 
it as little dangerous as possible. It has been the 
opinion of some of the ablest and most successful po- 
liticians of our time that, by adopting a very low 
suffrage, it would be possible to penetrate below the 
region where crotchets and experiments and crude Uto- 
pias and habitual restlessness prevail, and to reach the 
strong, settled habits, the enduring tendencies, the 
deep conservative instincts of the nation. Such an 
idea was evidently present in the minds both of Louis 
Napoleon and of Lord Beaconsfield, and it probably 



294 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

largely influenced the great statesman who based the 
Grerman Constitution on universal suffrage. How far 
it may be true I do not here discuss. It is probable 
that the recent turn in English politics has added con- 
siderably to the number of those who believe in it. It 
seems to me, at least, certain that popular opinion is 
likely to be least dangerous if it is an unsophisticated 
opinion on a direct issue, as far as possible uninfluenced 
by agitators and professional politicians. It is very pos- 
sible that its tendencies might be towards extreme Con- 
servatism ; but the pendulum has moved so long and 
so violently in the opposite direction that a period of 
pause, or even of reaction, might not appear an evil. 

The welcome the reader will extend to such consi- 
derations will depend largely upon his view of the ex- 
isting state of the Constitution. If he believes that 
parliamentary government in its present form is firmly 
established, working well, and likely to endure, he will 
naturally object to any change which would alter fun- 
damentally the centre of power. If he believes that 
some of the most essential springs of the British Con- 
stitution have been fatally weakened, and that our 
system of government is undergoing a perilous process 
of disintegration, transformation, and deterioration, he 
will be inclined to look with more favour on possible 
remedies, even though they be very remote from the 
national habits and traditions. 

Another method by which the evils of a decaying 
parliamentary system may be in some degree mitigated 
is by the extension of the powers of committees. The 
only possible manner in which a large assembly of men 
can directly and efficiently discharge much business is 
by the strict organisation of parties, which throws the 
whole initiation and direction into a few competent 
hands. But under the best organisation a large as- 



CH. III. AMERICAN COMMITTEES 295 

sembly is unfit for the investigation of details, and 
when the discipline of Parliament and of parties gives 
way its incapacity becomes very manifest. In the 
United States, as is well known, congressional, or, as 
we should say, parliamentary, legislation is almost 
entirely in the hands of committees. Fifty or sixty 
committees of the House of Eepresentatives, and a 
somewhat smaller number of committees of the Senate, 
are appointed at the beginning of every Congress. 
Each of them usually consists of about eleven mem- 
bers ; they sit for two years, and they are entrusted 
with unlimited powers of curtailing, altering, or ex- 
tending the Bills that come before them. They do not 
receive those Bills after discussion in the Chambers. 
Both the first and second readings are granted as a 
matter of course, and it is in the committees that Bills 
receive their full investigation and definite shape. 
The deliberations there are usually secret, and nearly 
always unreported. The great majority of the Bills are 
stifled in committee, either by long postponement or 
by unfavourable reports. Those which are favourably 
reported have to receive the sanction of Congress ; but 
they are usually only discussed in the shortest and 
most cursory manner, and in the vast majority of cases 
the task of framing legislation lies in reality, not with 
the Chambers, but with these small delegated bodies. 
Mr. Bryce has described the process in detail, and he 
observes that ' the House has become not so much a 
legislative assembly as a huge panel from which com- 
mittees are selected.''^ 



' Since Mr. Bryce's book of conducting business in legis- 

appeared, an American politi- lative bodies, which has become 

cian, discussing the decline of general, must also be taken 

oratory in the United States, into account. Legislation by 

says : ' A change in the method committees, instead of by the 



296 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

The system is extremely unlike our own. The mi- 
nisters do not sit in Congress, and therefore cannot 
guide it ; and they do not depend for their tenure of 
office upon its approval. The Speaker, who in Eng- 
land represents the most absolute impartiality, is, in 
America, the most powerful of party leaders, for he 
nominates the members of the committees, by whom 
legislation is virtually made. As Mr. Bryce observes. 
Congress loses its unity and much of its importance, 
and parliamentary oratory dwindles into insignificance. 
The public, who know that the real business of legisla- 
tion is transacted in small secret bodies, come to look 
on Congress and its proceedings with great indiifer- 
ence ; and legislation being mainly the product of a 
number of small and independent bodies, is much 
wanting in cohesion and harmony. 

If these were the only consequences, they might 
readily be accepted. Some of them, indeed, would 
appear to many of us positive advantages. Unfortu- 



whole body, is the prevailing committee-room, and puts it in 

method of the present day. Al- charge of another committee of 

most the entire consideration three, to determine beforehand 

and shaping of the most impor- when it shall be considered by 

tant measures which now come the bodies who are to pass upon 

before legislative bodies is done it, for how long a time, and in 

in the committee-room before what shape, and by what num- 

they are reported for action, ber of supporters and opponents, 

Little more than ratification of to be selected as prize coraba- 

committee work remains after a tants are selected by the oppo- 

measure leaves the committee- sing sides in a ring, and the 

room. There are exceptions, hour by the clock when such 

but this is the rule. Conse- consideration shall cease — does 

quently, the opportunity for de- any one conceive it possible 

bate is greatly abridged, and for that anything deserving the 

extended oration almost entirely name of oratory or eloquence 

cutoff. . . . Add to this modern can be the outcome of such a 

method that other invention of contest ? ' (The Hon. Henry 

recent years, which takes up Dawes in The Forum^ October 

legislation tlms prepared in the 1894, p. 153), 



CH. III. ENGLISH COMMITTEES 297 

natelj, the corruption, log-rolling, and intrigue that 
so deeply infect American politics appear to be abun- 
dantly displayed in tlie work of the committees.^ 

The system, however, is essentially different from par- 
liamentary government. It places the task of framing 
laws in the hands of small groups of shrewd business 
men, who work without any of the disturbing influences 
of publicity ; and it diminishes, though it certainly 
does not destroy, the injurious influence on public 
business of anarchy and deterioration in Congress. In 
France a different system prevails, but most legisla- 
tion is practically done in ^bureaux," or subdivisions of 
the Chamber, which are appointed for the considera- 
tion of particular subjects. In England the action of 
the whole House is much greater ; but the commit- 
tee system appears to be the healthiest part of our 
present parliamentary system, and it has been consider- 
ably extended by the adoption of standing committees 
in the House of Commons in 1883, and in the House 
of Lords in 1891.^ The committees are of several 
kinds. There are the select committees, which are 
appointed by either House for the purpose of inves- 
tigating complex subjects, and which have the power 
of calling witnesses before them. The new Stand- 
ing Committees of Law and Trade, commonly called 
grand committees, consist of from sixty to eighty mem- 
bers, representing different sections of the House, and 
they generally include Cabinet ministers. Various Bills 
are referred to them from the committee stage by a pro- 
cess of devolution, and their divisions on disputed points 
are duly recorded. Besides these there is the Commit- 
tee of Public Accounts, which, with the assistance of 



* Bryce's American Common- 2 May's Parliamentarij Pro- 

wealth, i. 204-18. cedure (Palgrave's edition). 



298 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. in. 

the departmental officials^ exercises a close and useful 
supervision over the details of finance.' 

It is probable that the power^ and perhaps the num- 
ber, of the committees will be increased, and that in 
this manner the much-impaired business capacity of 
the House may be considerably recruited. The pro- 
cess of devolution is likely, in some manner and under 
some conditions and restrictions, to be extended, either 
by special parliamentary committees, or in other ways, 
to bodies representing different portions of the Empire. 
The expense of carrying to London great masses of 
non-political private business which might be as effi- 
ciently and much more cheaply settled at home, is a 
real and serious grievance ; and the obstruction to par- 
liamentary business caused by the introduction of many 
matters that ought never to be brought before the 
supreme legislature of an empire, is now keenly felt. 
Sooner or later some change in this system must be 
effected, and a much larger proportion of Irish and 
Scotch business than at present is likely to be entrusted 
to bodies specially representing those countries. I do 
not propose to enter at large into this question. The 
two limitations that should be observed are, I think, 
sufficiently obvious. The one is, that no body should 
be set up which would be likely to prove in times of 
danger a source of weakness or division to the Empire. 
The other is, that Parliament should never so far abdi- 
cate its supreme duty of doing justice to all sections of 
the people as to set up any body that is likely to oppress 
or plunder any class. If these two conditions are fully 
and efficiently secured, local government may be wisely 
and largely extended. There is, however, no greater 



' There is an excellent account of the working of these commit- 
tees in Sir R. Temple's Life in Farliament. 



CH. III. VOTES OF CENSURE 299 

folly in politics than to set up a political body without 
considering the hands into which it is likely to fall^ or 
the spirit in which it is likely to be worked. 

One change in the internal regulation of Parliament 
has also been powerfully urged for the purpose of cor- 
recting the instability and intrigue which a multipli- 
cation of independent parliamentary groups is certain 
to produce. It is^, that a government should not con- 
sider itself bound either to resign or dissolve on ac- 
count of an adverse division due^ perhaps^ to a chance 
or factious combination of irreconcilable minorities, but 
should retain office until a formal vote of want of con- 
fidence indicates clearly the desire of the House of 
Commons. It does not, however, appear to me that 
this change would be, on the whole, an improvement. 
The fact that it has never been made in France, where 
the evil of instability in the government arising from 
the group system in Parliament has attained its ex- 
treme limits, shows how difficult it would be to implant 
it in parliamentary institutions. A defeat in the House 
of Lords does not overthrow a ministry ; a defeat in 
the House of Commons on a particular question may 
be always remedied, if the House desires it, by a vote 
of confidence. If the change we are considering would 
mitigate the evil of parliamentary disintegration, it 
would, as it seems to me, aggravate the not less serious 
evil of the despotism of party caucuses. It continually 
happens that a government, long before the natural 
duration of a Parliament has expired, loses the confi- 
dence of the House of Commons and of the country, 
and it is very undesirable that, under these circum- 
stances, it should continue in office. It is, however, 
seldom likely that its majority would be destroyed by 
a formal vote of want of confidence. Liberals would 
hesitate to vote definitely as Tories, or Tories as Li- 



300 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

berals. and tlie pressure of party organisations would 
override genuine opinions. It is on side-issues or in- 
cidental questions that the true feeling of the House is 
most likely to be displayed and a bad ministry defeated. 
After all due ^veight has been given to the possible 
remedies that have been considered, it still seems to me 
that the jDarliamentary system, when it rests on man- 
hood suffrage, or something closely approaching to 
manhood suffrage, is extremely unlikely to be perma- 
nent. This was evidently the opinion of Tocqueville, 
who was strongly persuaded that the natural result of 
democracy was a highly concentrated, enervating, but 
mild despotism.^ It is the opinion of many of the 
most eminent contemporary thinkers in France and 
Clermany, and it is, I think, steadily growing in Eng- 
land. This does not mean that Parliaments will cease, 
or that a wide suffrage will be abolished. It means 
that Parliaments, if constructed on this ty23e, cannot 
permanently remain the supreme power among the na- 
tions of the world. Sooner or later they will sink'by 
their own vices and inefficiencies into a lower plane. 
They will lose the power of making and unmaking 
ministries, and it will be found absolutely necessary to 
establish some strong executive independently of their 
fluctuations. Very probably this executive may be 
established, as in America and under the French Em- 
pire, upon a broad basis of an independent suffrage. 
Very possibly upper chambers, constituted upon some 
sagacious plan. Avill again play a great restraining and 
directing part in the government of the world. Few 
joersons who ha^e watched the changes that have j^assed 
over our own House of Commons within the last few 
years will either believe or wish that in fift}^ years' time 



Lc THiiujcratie en Anierique^ 4"'^ partie. 



CH. III. LOCAL GOVERNMENT 301 

it can exercise the power it now does. It is only too 
probable that some great catastrophe or the stress of a 
great war may accelerate the change. 

I do not speak of the modern extensions of local go- 
vernment in the counties or towns as diminishing the 
authority of democratic Parliaments. These extensions 
have been themselves great democratic triumphs^ trans- 
ferring to bodies resting on a very low suffrage powers 
which were either in the hands of persons nominated 
by the Crown^ or in the hands of persons whose elec- 
tion depended on a high property qualification, and 
especially on the possession of landed property. The 
preceding pages will have abundantly illustrated the 
dangers that are to be feared from unchecked demo- 
cracy in this field. In England there is a great belief 
in the educational value of this kind of government. 
It is true that an honest, well-meaning local govern- 
ment may begin by making many mistakes, but will 
soon acquire the habits of good government. On the 
other hand, if local government falls into the hands of 
corrupt, self-seeking, dishonest men, it will promote 
quite other habits, and will have very little tendency 
to improve. Prolonged continuity of jobbing is not an 
education in which good statesmen are likely to be 
formed, and few things have done so much to demo- 
ralise American political life as the practices that pre- 
vail in municipal government and in the management 
of ^ the machine.^ 

On the whole, it can hardly be questioned that, in 
spite of great complexities and incoherences of admi- 
nistration, and of many strange anomalies, England 
has been for many years singularly happy in her local 
governments. The country gentlemen who chiefiy 
managed her county government, at least discharged 
their task with great integrity, and with a very exten- 



302 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

sive and minute knowledge of the districts they ruled. 
They had their faults^ but they were much more nega- 
tive than positive. They did few things which they 
ought not to have done, but they left undone many 
things which they ought to have done. There was in 
general no corruption ; gross abuses were very rare, 
and public money was, on the whole, wisely and eco- 
nomically expended ; but evils that might have been 
remedied were often left untouched, and there was 
much need of a more active reforming spirit in county 
administration. 

Our town governments, also, since the great Mu- 
nicipal Act of 1835, have been, on the whole, very 
successful. They have not fallen into the hands of 
corrupt politicians like the greater number of the mu- 
nicipal governments in America ; the statesmen of the 
period of the first Reform Bill never failed to maintain 
a close connection between the power of taxing and the 
obligation of paying rates and taxes, and the strong 
controlling influence they gave to property in municipal 
government, and in the administration of the poor 
laws, secured an honest employment of public money. 
The first and most vital rule of all good government is, 
that those who vote taxes should contribute, to some 
appreciable extent, to paying them ; that those who 
are responsible for the administration of affairs should 
themselves suffer from maladministration. This car- 
dinal rule is, if possible, even more applicable to local 
than to imperial government. Imperial government 
is largely concerned with wide political issues. Local 
government is specially, and beyond all things, a ma- 
chine for raising and employing money. In every 
sound company the directors must qualify for their 
post by being large shareholders, and the shareholders 
who have the largest interest have the greatest number 



CH. III. LOCAL GOVERNMENT 303 

of votes. This is the first and most obvious rule for 
obtaining an honest and frugal administration of money^ 
and the success and purity of English local government 
have been largely due to the steadiness with which the 
great statesmen who followed the Eeform Bill of 1832 
acted upon it. 

It has been reserved for the present generation of 
statesmen to do all that is in their power to destroy it. 
It has come to be regarded as a Liberal principle that 
it is a wrong thing to impose rating or property quali- 
fications on those who vote rates and govern property. 
Thus, by the Act of 1894 all property qualifications for 
vestrymen and poor-law guardians have been abolished. 
The rating qualification for voting is no longer neces- 
sary. The ex-officio and nominated guardians, who 
were always men of large experience and indisputable 
character, have been swept away ; the obviously equita- 
ble rule that ratepayers should have votes for guardians 
in proportion to the amount of their contributions has 
been replaced by the rule of one voter, one vote. The 
old property qualifications for the electors of district 
boards have been abolished, and at the same time those 
boards have acquired additional powers over different 
kinds of property. With many politicians the evident 
ideal of city governme:Qt is, that a great owner of town 
property, who necessarily pays the largest proportion of 
the municipal taxation, whose interests are most indis- 
solubly associated with the prosperity of the city, and 
who, from his very prominence, is specially likely to 
be made the object of predatory attacks, should have no 
more voice than the humblest tenant on his estate in 
imposing, regulating, distributing, and applying muni- 
cipal taxation. 

It would be difficult to conceive a system more cer- 
tain to lead to corruption and dishonesty ; and other 



304 DEMOCRACY A^T> LIBERTY ch. hi. 

circumstances contribute to enhance the danger. If 
taxation were as limited in its amount^ and public 
expenditure restricted to as few objects as in the past 
generation, it would signify comparatively little how 
its burden was distributed. But one of the most 
marked tendencies of our time is the enlargement of 
the area of State functions and the amount of State 
expenditure. The immense increase of local taxation, 
and especially local debt, that has taken place within 
a very few years has long excited the alarm of the most 
serious politicians in England. The complications of 
local taxation are so great that it is probably not pos- 
sible to obtain complete accuracy on this subject, but 
there can be no question of the appalling rapidity with 
which the movement has advanced. In a very useful 
paper published under the auspices of the Cobden Club 
in 1882, it was calculated that the local indebtedness of 
England and AVales had risen between 1872 and 1880 
from 80,000,000?. to 137,096, 607/. ^ In 1891, it was 
stated in the House of Commons to be 195,400,000?. 
In the following year it was stated that, in the preced- 
ing fifteen years, the national debt had fallen from 
768,945,757?. to 689,944,026?., but that during the 
same period the municipal debt had risen from 92,820,- 
100?. to 198,671,312?.' There seems no sign of this 
tendency having spent its force, and schemes involving 
vast increases of municipal expenditure are manifestly 
in the air. It is at this time that the policy of sepa- 
rating the payment of taxes from the voting of taxes 
is most largely adopted. Unfortunately, the very ten- 
dencies that make it so dangerous increase its popu- 



' Local Government a?id Tax- Lord Wemyssin an Address on 

ation of the United Kingdom Modern Municipalism (1893), 

(Cobden Club), p. 480. p. 11. 

^ See some facts collected by 



CH. iTL MILITARY AND NAVAL EXPENDITURE 305 

larity, and therefore its attractiveness to politicians, 
whose great object is to win votes and tide over an 
election. 

The enormous increase which has also taken place in 
the State taxation of nearly every civilised country 
during the last forty-five years is certainly one of the 
most disquieting features of our time. It is to be at- 
tributed to several different causes. The worst is that 
gigantic increase of national debts and of military ex- 
penditure which has taken place in Europe since the 
Eevolution of 1848. National indebtedness has reached 
a point that makes the bankruptcy of many nations an 
almost inevitable result of any prolonged European 
war ; and the immense burden of unproductive ex- 
penditure that is drawn from every nation for the pur- 
pose of paying the national creditors, gives revolutionary 
literature a great part of its plausibility, and forms one 
of the strongest temptations to national dishonesty. 
The incentive is the stronger as most national debts are 
largely held by foreigners, and as there is no interna- 
tional organisation corresponding to a bankruptcy court 
for coercing or punishing a defaulting nation. Of this 
military expenditure it will here be sufficient to say 
that it is far from measured by the direct taxes which 
are raised ; and the withdrawal of a vast proportion of 
human effort from productive employment, and the 
enslavement, during the best part of their lives, of a 
vast proportion of the population of Europe, have 
probably contributed, as much as any other single 
cause, to the revolutionary tendencies of our time. 

England need not, I think, take to herself much 
blame in these respects. If she has not done all that 
she might have done since the great French war to 
diminish her debt, she has at least done very much, 
and far more than any other European country, while 
VOL. I. 20 



306 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

her military and naval expenditure has usually been 
rather below than above what is needed for her abso- 
lute security. The growth, however, of this expendi- 
ture has been very great. Between 1835 and 1888 it 
is said to have increased by no less than 173 per cent.^ 
This is, however, mainly due to the gigantic armaments 
on the Continent, and to the enormous increase in the 
cost and the constant changes in the type of ships and 
guns. The burden is a terrible one ; but every one who 
will look facts in the face must recognise that the ex- 
istence at each given moment of an English fleet of over- 
whelming power is the first and most vital condition 
of the security of the nation. An island Power which 
cannot even support its population with food ; which 
depends for its very existence on a vast commerce ; 
which from the vastness of its dominions and inte- 
rests is constantly liable to be involved in dispute with 
other Powers, and which presents peculiar temptation 
to an invader, could on no other condition maintain her 
independence, and it is a healthy sign that English 
public opinion realises the transcendent importance of 
the fact, and has more than once forced it upon poli- 
ticians who were neglecting it. 

What may be the final result of this growing ex- 
penditure no man can say. It is possible, and by no 
means improbable, that the increasing power of guns 
and torpedoes may make large ships useless in war, 
and may again revolutionise, and perhaps greatly 
cheapen, naval war. It is possible, and perhaps proba- 
ble, that the means of defence may obtain an over- 
whelming preponderance over the means of attack. 
Small and poor nations which have taken an honour- 
able part in the naval history of the past find it im- 



Leroy-Beaulieu, TraHe des finances^ ii. 168. 



CH. III. MILITARY AND NAVAL EXPENDITURE 307 

possible to enter into serious competition with the 
costly navies of the present^ and it is probable that the 
richest nations will, sooner or later, find it impossible 
without ruin to maintain at once the position of a 
first-rate military and a first-rate naval Power. The 
time may come when some great revolution of opinion 
or some great internal convulsion may check or re- 
verse the tendency of the last half-century, and bring 
about a great movement for disarmament. Till that 
time arrives there can be little hope of any serious 
diminution of this great branch of national expendi- 
ture. 

I know few things more melancholy or more instruc- 
tive than to compare the present state of Europe in 
this respect with the predictions of the Manchester 
school, and of the writers who, within the memory of 
many of us, were looked upon as the most faithful 
representatives of advanced thought. Some of my 
readers will doubtless remember the enthusiasm and 
admiration with which, in 1857, the first volume of 
Buckleys great History was welcomed. In spite of 
much crudeness, many shortcomings, and great dog- 
matism, it was a book well fitted to make an epoch on 
its subject. The vast horizons it opened ; the sweep 
and boldness of its generalisations ; its admirable lite- 
rary qualities, and the noble enthusiasm for knowledge, 
for progress, and for liberty that animated it, captivated 
and deeply influenced a whole generation of young 
men. One of the most confident of Buckleys predic- 
tions was, that the military spirit had had its day ; 
that the ' commercial spirit, "* which is now ' invariably 
pacific,' would speedily reduce it to insignificance ; 
that, although it might linger for a time among the 
most backward and semi-barbarous nations of Europe, 
like Russia and Turkey, all the higher talent, all the 



308 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

stronger ambitions, all the force of public opinion in 
the civilised world, would be steadily against it. 

The American Civil War, the war of France and 
Italy against Austria, the war of Prussia and Austria 
against Denmark, the war of Prussia and Italy against 
Austria, the great Pranco-German War of 1870, speed- 
ily followed, and Europe in time of peace has become 
a gigantic camp, supporting armies which, in their 
magnitude and their perfection, are unparalleled in the 
history of the world. It was estimated in 1888 that 
Germany, Austria, France, Italy, and Eassia, could 
probably together put in the field more than sixteen 
millions of soldiers in time of war, and that their 
united armies in time of peace were not less than 
2,3i5,000 men.i 

Two facts connected with this military develop- 
ment are especially significant. One is, that the trad- 
ing and commercial spirit has now become one of the 
chief impulses towards territorial aggrandisement. 
'^ Trade," as it has been truly said, 'follows the flag." 
With the present system of enormous manufacturing 
production and stringent protective barriers, it has be- 
come absolutely necessary for a great manufacturing 
State to secure for itself a sufficient market by incor- 
porating new territories in its dominions. In hardly 
any period of her history has England annexed so 
much territory as in the last half-century, and al- 
though many of these annexations are due to the 
necessity which often compels a civilised power as a 
mere measure of police and self-defence to extend its 
frontier into the uncivilised world, much also must be 
attributed to commercial enterprise. 

England has not been alone in this respect. Few 



Revue de_ Droit International^ xi. 99. 



CH. III. ANNEXATIONS 309 

more curious spectacles have been exhibited in the pre- 
sent century than that of the chief civilised nations of 
Europe dividing among themselves the African conti- 
nent without even a shadow or pretext of right. Ex- 
perience has already shown how easily these vague and 
ill-defined boundaries may become a new cause of 
European quarrels, and how often, in remote African 
jungles or forests, negroes armed with European guns 
may inflict defeats on European soldiers which will be- 
come the cause of costly and difficult wars. 

Another very remarkable fact has been the growing 
feeling in the most civilised portions of Europe in 
favour of universal military service. Not many years 
ago it would scarcely have found a conspicuous defen- 
der, except perhaps Carlyle, outside purely military 
circles ; but no competent judge can fail to observe the 
change Avhicli has of late years taken place. The system 
has now struck a deep root in the habits of Continental 
life, and in the eyes of a considerable and able school 
it is rather a positive good than a necessary evil. 

Its defenders contend, in the first place, that these 
gigantic armies make rather for peace than for war. 
The tremendous force of the weapon, the extreme 
difficulty of managing it ; the uncertainty that more 
than ever hangs over the issue of a struggle ; the 
complete paralysis of all industrial life that must now 
accompany a great war, and the utter ruin that may 
follow defeat, impose a severe restraint on the most 
ambitious statesman and the most excited pojDulation ; 
while vast citizen armies, wliich must be dragged from 
domestic life and peaceful industry to the battlefield, 
will never be pervaded with the desire for war that 
animates purely professional soldiers. I have heard, 
indeed, one of the most competent judges of the politi- 
cal and military state of Europe predict that the most 



310 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

dangerous period to European peace will be that which 
follows a disarmament;, reducing the armies of the rival 
V Powers to moderate and manageable dimensions. 

^ But^ in addition to this consideration, a strong con- 
viction has grown up of the moral and educational 
vahie of military discipline. It is urged that, in an 
age when many things contribute to weaken the na- 
tional fibre and produce in large classes a languid, 
epicurean, semi-detached cosmopolitanism, universal 
service tends strongly to weld nations together, to 
strengthen the patriotic feeling, to form a high stan- 
dard of civic duty and of self-sacrificing courage, to 
inspire the masses of the population with the kind and 
the intensity of enthusiasm that is most conducive to 
the greatness of nations. It carries the idea and sen- 
timent of nationhood to multitudes whose thoughts 
would otherwise have never travelled beyond the narrow 
circle of daily wants or of village interests. The eifect 
of universal service in Italy in civilising half-barba- 
rous populations, in replacing old provincial jealousies 
and prejudices by the sentiment of a common national- 
ity, has been abundantly displayed. In some cases a 
measure of ordinary education is now combined with 
military service, and the special education which disci- 
pline in itself produces is, it is contended, peculiarly 
needed in our day. ' The true beginning of wisdom,^ 
a wise old Hebrew writer has said, ^ is the desire of 
discipline,' ^ and it is probably on this side that modern 
education is most defective. Military service at least 
produces habits of order, cleanliness, punctuality, obe- 
dience, and respect for authority, and, unlike most 
forms of popular education, it acts powerfully on the 
character and on the will. A few years spent in this 



Wisdom of Solomon, vi. 17. 



CH. III. THE MILITARY SYSTEM 311 

school and amid the associations of the barrack will not 
tend to make men saints, but it is likely to do much to 
strengthen and discipline their characters, and to fit 
them to play a useful and honourable part in civil life. 
It at least gives them the tastes and habits of civilised 
men, corrects many senseless prejudices, forms brave, 
steady, energetic, and patriotic citizens. It mitigates 
the problems of the unemployed and of pauperism, and 
exercises a reforming influence on the idlest and most 
disorderly elements in society. Such men are far more 
likely to be reclaimed by the strong, steady pressure of 
military discipline than by any teaching of the Churches 
or the schools. 

In all countries, it is truly said, when peace has con- 
tinued long, and when wealth and prosperity have 
greatly increased, insidious vices grow up which do 
much to corrode the strength of nations. Lax princi- 
ples, low ideals ; luxurious, self-indulgent, effeminate 
habits of thought and life prevail ; the robuster quali- 
ties decline ; the power of self-sacrifice is diminished, 
and life in all its forms takes a less serious cast. The 
catastrophe of a great war is often Nature^s stern cor- 
rective of these evils, but every wise statesman will 
look for remedies that are less drastic and less perilous. 
Of these, a few years of universal military discipline is 
one of the most powerful. It is the best tonic for a 
debilitated system. 

Some admirers have gone even further. There is a 
theory, which, I believe, took its rise in Germany, but 
which has found adherents in England, that the gigan- 
tic armies of the Continent in reality cost nothing, for 
the productive powers of men are so much increased by 
a few years of military discipline that society is amply 
compensated for the sacrifice it has made. Two or 
three years of a life are taken from productive employ- 



312 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. m. 

ment and supported from national funds, but the re- 
mainder is rendered greatly more productive. 

I have endeavoured to state the case of the supporters 
of universal service in its strongest form. I do not 
think that it can be doubted that it contains some 
truth ; but, like much truth that has been long ne- 
glected, it has been thrust into an exaggerated and 
misleading prominence. The question is one of ex- 
treme importance for the English-speaking race, for, if 
the education of universal military service does all that 
is attributed to it, the Continental nations which have 
generally adopted it must necessarily, in the long run, 
rise to a higher plane than the English race, who, on 
both sides of the ocean, have steadily rejected it. To 
me, at least, the theory of the inexpensiveness of the 
Continental military system seems to be a complete 
paradox, in the face of the overwhelming and ever- 
increasing burden of debt and taxation distinctly due 
to the military system, which is crushing and paralysing 
the industry of Europe and threatening great nations 
with speedy bankruptcy. It is true that military dis- 
cipline often forms valuable industrial qualities ; but 
it is also true that the conscription breaks the habits 
of industrial life at the very age when it is most impor- 
tant that they should be formed, and that, in countless 
cases, the excitements and associations of military life 
utterly unfit men for the monotony of humble labour, 
pursued, perhaps, in some remote hamlet, and amid 
surroundings of abject poverty. 

With the present gigantic armies, wars have, no 
doubt, become less frequent, though they have become 
incomparably more terrible ; but can anyone seriously 
contend that the unrestrained and reckless military 
competition of the last few years has given Europe 
any real security, or that either the animosities or the 



CH. III. THE MILITARY SYSTEM 313 

aspirations that threaten it have gone down ? Are 
its statesmen confident that an ambitious monarchy or 
a propitious moment ; or an alliance or an invention 
that materially changes the balance of forces, or some 
transient outburst of national irritation injudiciously 
treated, might not at any moment set it once more in a 
blaze ? To strew gunpowder on all sides may, no doubt, 
produce caution, but it is not the best way of prevent- 
ing an explosion. Never in the history of mankind 
have explosive elements of such tremendous potency 
been accumulated in Europe, and, with all our boasted 
democracy, the issues of peace or war have seldom 
rested so largely with three or four men. In the pre- 
sent condition of the world, it would be quite possible 
for the folly of a single ruler to bring down calamities 
upon Europe that might transfer the sceptre of civili- 
sation to the other side of the Atlantic. 

The security of internal peace given by a great army, 
and the influence of military discipline in forming 
habits of life and thought that are opposed to anarchi- 
cal and revolutionary tendencies, have been much dwelt 
on. But if the military system does much to employ 
and reclaim the dangerous classes, if it teaches loyalty 
and obedience and respect, it also brings with it bur- 
dens which are steadily fomenting discontent. Cer- 
tainly, the great military nations of the world are not 
those in which Anarchy, Socialism, and Nihilism are 
least rife. Of all the burdens that a modern Govern- 
ment can impose on its subjects, incomparably the 
heaviest is universal compulsory military service, and, 
to a large minority of those who undergo it, it is the 
most irritating and the most crushing servitude. Nor 
should it be forgotten tliat, if this system furnishes 
Governments with tremendous engines of repression, 
it is also preparing the time when every revolutionary 



314 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

movement will be made by men who have the knowledge 
and exj)erience of military life. A great military Power 
continually augmenting its army in hopes of repressing 
anarchy j^resents a spectacle much like that which may 
be seen at a Spanish bullfight when the banderilla has 
been planted by a skilful hand, and when every bound 
by which the infuriated animal seeks to shake off the 
barb that is lacerating its flesh only deepens and exas- 
perates the Avound. 

Xo reasonable man will deny that a period of steady 
discipline is, to many characters, an education of great 
value — an education producing results that are not 
likely in any other way to be equally attained. It is 
especially useful in communities that are still in a low 
stage of civilisation, and have not yet attained the ha- 
bits of order and respect for authority, and in commu- 
nities that are deeply divided by sectional and provincial 
antipathies. It is, I think, equally true that improve- 
ments have been introduced into modern armies which 
have greatly raised their moral tone. But, when all 
this is admitted, the shadows of the picture remain 
very marked. Deferred marriage, the loosening of 
domestic ties, the growth of ideals in which bloodshed 
and violence play a great part, a diminished horror of 
war, the constant employment of the best human inge- 
nuity in devising new and more deadly instruments of 
destruction — all these things follow in the train of the 
great armies. It is impossible to turn Europe into a 
camp without in some degree reviving the ideals and 
the standards of a military age. 

Discipline teaches much, but it also represses much, 
and the dead-level and passive obedience of the mili- 
tary system are not the best school of independent 
thought and individual energy. To the finer and more 
delicate flowers of human culture it is peculiarly pre- 



CH. III. THE MILITARY SYSTEM 315 

judicial. Strongly marked individual types, highly 
strung, sensitive, nervous organisations, are tlie soils 
from which much that is most beautiful in our civili- 
sation has sprung. Beyond all other things, enforced 
military service tends to sterilise them. Among such 
men it is difficult to overestimate either the waste and 
ruin of high talent, or the amount of acute and useless 
suffering that it produces. To democracies these things 
are of little moment, and they seem lost in the splen- 
dour and pageantry of military life. But the statistics 
that are occasionally published, exhibiting the im- 
mensely disproportionate number of suicides in some 
of the chief armies of the Continent, show clearly the 
suffering that is festering beneath. 

Taine has devoted to the growth of the military sys- 
tem several pages of admirable power and truth, and he 
justly describes conscription as the natural companion 
or brother of universal suffrage — one of the two great 
democratic forces which seem destined for some time 
to rule the world. ^ The levelling and intermingling of 
classes it produces renders it congenial to a democratic 
age, and the old system of obtaining exemptions and 
substitutions for money has been generally abolished. 
In the majority of cases, those who desired exemption 
were men with no military aptitude, so the army proba- 
bly gained by the substitution. It was a free contract, 
in which the poor man received what the rich man 
paid, and by which both parties were benefited. It 
gave, however, some privilege to wealth, and democracy, 
true to its genuine instinct of preferring equality to 
liberty, emphatically condemned it. 

There is, however, another aspect of the question 
which has impressed serious observers on the Oonti- 



1 Origines de la France Contemporaine : Le Regime Moderne^ i. 
284-96. 



816 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iii. 

nent. In spite of the affinity I have mentioned, it 
would be hardly possible to conceive a greater contrast 
in spirit and tendency than exists in some essential 
respects between the highly democratic representative 
Governments and the universal military service^ which 
are simultaneously flourishing in a great part of Europe. 
The one is a system in which all ideas of authority and 
subordination are discarded, in which the skilful talker 
or demagogue naturally rules, in which every question 
is decided by the votes of a majority, in which liberty 
is perpetually pushed to the borders of license. The 
other is a system of the strictest despotism and subor- 
dination, of passive obedience without discussion or re- 
monstrance ; a system with ideals, habits, and standards 
of judgment utterly unlike those of popular politics ; a 
system which is rapidly including, and moulding, and 
representing the whole adult male population. And 
while parliamentary government is everywhere show- 
ing signs of growing inefficiency and discredit, the 
armies of Europe are steadily strengthening, absorbing 
more and more the force and manhood of Christendom. 
Some observers are beginning to ask themselves whether 
these two things are likely always to go on together, 
and always to maintain their present relation — whether 
the eagles will always be governed by the parrots. 

The great growth of militarism in the latter half 
of the nineteenth century has, I think, contributed 
largely, though indirectly, to the prevailing tendency 
to aggrandise the powers of government and to seek 
social reforms in strong, coercive organisations of so- 
ciety. It is also the chief source of the immense in- 
crease of taxation, which has so seriously aggravated the 
dangers of a period of democratic transformation. It is 
not, indeed, by any means the only source. Something 
is due to the higher wages, the better payment of func- 



cir. iiL NATIONAL EDUCATION 317 

tionaries and workmen of every order, which has fol- 
lowed in the train of a higher standard of life and 
comfort. This beneficent movement was much ac- 
centuated in a period of great prosperity, and it has 
continued with little abatement, though economical 
conditions have much changed. 

A much more considerable cause, however, of the 
increase of national expenditure is to be found in the 
many new duties that are thrown upon the State. The 
most important of these has been that of national edu- 
cation. Hardly any change in our generation has been 
more marked than that which made the education of 
the poor one of the main functions of the Grovernment. 
In 1833, a parliamentary grant of 20,000?. was, for the 
first time, made in England to assist two societies en- 
gaged in popular education. In 1838, the parliamen- 
tary grant was raised to 30,000/. a year. It soon passed 
these limits ; but the great period of national expendi- 
ture on education is much more recent. Before the 
Act of 1870 the State, in encouraging primary educa- 
tion, confined itself to grants in aid of local and volun- 
tary bodies. It built no schools, and it made no 
provision for education where local agencies were want- 
ing. The Act of 1870, providing for the establishment 
of a school in every district where the supply of educa- 
tion was deficient ; the Act of 1876, making it penal 
for parents to neglect the education of their children, 
and the Act of 1891, granting free education, were the 
chief causes of the rapid rise in this branch of expendi- 
ture. In 1892 the total expenditure of school boards 
in England and Wales amounted to the enormous sum 
of 7,134,386?. The number of free scholars was about 
3,800,000, and the number of children paying fees or 
partial fees was about 1,020,000.^ 

^ See the statistics in Whitaker's Almanack for 1894, pp. GOl, 605. 



318 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch, hi. 

England lias^ in this respect^ only acted on the same 
lines as other civilised countries. She has acted on the 
supposition that, in the competition of nations, no un- 
educated people can hold its own, either in industrial 
or political competitions, and that democratic govern- 
ment can only be tolerable when it rests on the broad 
basis of an educated people. Probably few persons 
will noAv altogether doubt these truths, thongh some- 
thing of the old belief in the omnipotence of education 
may have passed away, and though some qualifying 
considerations may have come into sight. The old 
Tory doctrine, that national education may easily be 
carried to a point which unfits men for the manual 
toil in which the great majority must pass their lives, 
was certainly not without foundation. Formerly, the 
best workman was usually content to remain in his 
class, and to bring up his children in it. He took a 
pride in his work, and by doing so he greatly raised its 
standard and character. His first desire is now, much 
more frequently, to leave it, or at least to educate his 
children in the tastes and habits of a class which he 
considers a little higher than his own. That a man 
born in the humbler stages of society, who possesses 
the power of playing a considerable part in the world, 
should be helped to do so is very desirable ; but it is by 
no means desirable that the fiower of the Avorking-class, 
or their children, should learn to despise manual labour 
and the simple, inexpensive habits of their 2)arents, in 
order to become very commonplace doctors, attorneys, 
clerks, or newspaper writers. This is what is continu- 
ally happening, and while it deprives the working- 
classes of their best elements, it is one great cause of 
the exaggerated competition which now falls with 
crushing weight on the lower levels of the intellectual 
professions. 



CH. III. SOME RESULTS OP POPULAR EDUCATION 319 

Education^ even to a very humble degree^ does much 
to enlarge interests and brighten existence ; but^ by a 
melancholy compensation, it makes men far more im- 
patient of the tedium, the monotony, and the contrasts 
of life. It produces desires which it cannot always 
sate, and it affects very considerably the disposition and 
relations of classes. One common result is the strong 
preference for town to country life. A marked and un- 
happy characteristic of the present age in England is 
the constant depletion of the country districts by the 
migration of multitudes of its old, healthy population 
to the debilitating, and often depraving, atmosphere of 
the great towns. The chief causes of this change are, 
no doubt, economical. In the extreme depression of ag- 
riculture, every farmer finds it absolutely essential to 
keep his wage bill at the lowest point, and therefore to 
employ as few labourers as possible. Machinery takes 
the place of hand labour. Arable land, which supports 
many, becomes pasture land, which supports few. But 
everyone who has much practical acquaintance with 
country life will, I believe, agree that the movement has 
been greatly intensified by the growing desire for more 
excitement and amusement which, under the influ- 
ence of popular education, has spread widely through 
the agricultural labourers. Hopes and ambitions that 
are too often bitterly falsified draw them in multitudes 
to the great towns. 

This restlessness and discontent produce considerable 
political effects. Education nearly always promotes 
peaceful tastes and orderly habits in the community, 
but in other respects its political value is often greatly 
overrated. The more dangerous forms of animosity 
and dissension are usually undiminished, and are often 
stimulated, by its influence. An immense proportion 
of those who have learnt to read, never read anything 



320 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. hi. 

but a party newspaper — very probably a newspaper spe- 
cially intended to inflame or to mislead them — and the 
half-educated mind is peculiarly open to political Uto- 
pias and fanaticisms. A ery few such men can realise 
distant consequences, or even consequences which are 
distant but one remove from tlie primary or direct one. 
How few townsmen, in a political contest, will realise 
that the neglect or depression of agriculture beats down 
town wages, by producing an immigration of agricul- 
tural labourers ; or that a great strike in times of manu- 
facturing depression will usually drive the industry 
on which they depend for their food, in jDart at least, 
out of the country ; or that a highly graduated system 
of taxation, which at first brings in much money at the 
cost of the few, will soon lead to a migration of the 
capital which is essential to the subsistence of the many. 
Every politician knows how difficult it is in times of 
peace to arouse the public to the importance of the 
army and navy, on which the very existence of the Em- 
pire may depend, or to questions affecting national 
credit, or to questions affecting those distant portions 
of the Empire Avhich feed, by their commerce, our 
home industries. Few men clearly realise that each 
popular exemption from taxation, each popular sub- 
sidy that is voted, means a corresponding burden im- 
posed on some portion of the community ; or that 
economies Avhich leave Civil Servants underpaid almost 
always lead to wastefulness, inefficiency, and corrup- 
tion. Men seldom bestow on public questions the same 
seriousness of attention that they bestow on their pri- 
vate concerns, and they seldom look as far into the 
future. National interests continually give way to 
party or to class interests. The ultimate interests even 
of a class are subordinated to the immediate benefit of 
a section of it. Proximate ends overshadow distant 



CH. III. SHORTSIGHTED POLITICS 321 

consequences, and when the combative instinct, with 
all its passion and its pride, is aroused, even proximate 
interests are often forgotten. In few fields have there 
been more fatal miscalculations than in the competition 
and struggle of industrial life, and they are largely due 
to this cause. 

All classes are liable to mistakes of this kind, but 
they are especially prevalent among the half-educated, 
who have passed out of the empire of old habits and 
restraints. Such men are peculiarly apt to fall under 
misleading influences. They are usually insensible to 
the extreme complexity of the social fabric and the 
close interdependence of its many parts, and to the 
transcendent importance of consequences that are often 
obscure, remote, and diffused through many different 
channels. The complete illiteracy of a man is, no 
doubt, a strong argument against entrusting him with 
political power, but the mere knowledge of reading 
and Avriting is no real guarantee, or even presumption, 
that he will wisely exercise it. In order to attain this 
wisdom we must look to other methods — to a wide dif- 
fusion of property, to a system of representation that 
gives a voice to many different interests and types. 
The sedulous maintenance of the connection between 
taxation and voting is, perhaps, the best means of ob- 
taining it. 

These considerations are not intended to show that 
education is not a good thing, but only that its political 
advantages have not always proved as unmixed and as 
great as has been supposed. In the age in which we 
live, the incapacity and impotence that result from 
complete illiteracy can hardly be exaggerated, and 
every Government, as it seems to me, should make it 
its duty to provide that all its subjects should at least 
possess the rudiments of knowledge. It is also a mat- 

VOL. I. 21 



322 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

ter of much importance to the community that there 
should be ladders by which poor men of real ability can 
climb to higher positions in the social scale. This is 
an object for which private endowments have largely 
and Avisely provided, and, unless the flow of private 
benevolence is arrested by the increasing action of the 
State, endowments for this purpose are sure to mul- 
tiply. Another order of considerations, however, 
comes into play when great revenues are raised by com- 
pulsion for the purpose of establishing a free national 
education which has more the character of secondary 
than primary education. The childless are taxed for 
the education of children, and large classes of parents 
for the support of schools they will never use. Paren- 
tal responsibility, as well as parental rights, are dimi- 
nished, and a grinding weight of taxation, for a purpose 
with which they have little or no real sympathy, falls 
upon some of the most struggling classes in the com- 
munity. 

There can Ije little doubt that this form of taxation 
is likely to increase. A large party desire to provide 
at the expense of the State, not only free education, 
but also free school-books, free recreation-grounds, and 
at least one meal during school-hours. Sectarian jea- 
lousies and animosities, in more thaii one countr}^, add 
largely to the cost of education by an unnecessary mul- 
tiplication of schools, or by establishing a ruinous com- 
petition between State schools and schools established 
by voluntary subscription or supported by religious 
denominations. At the same time, the standard of 
popular and free, or, in other words, State-paid educa- 
tion, seems steadily rising. A crowd of subjects which 
lie far beyond the limits of primary education are 
already taught, either gratuitously or below cost price. 
In most countries, education in all its stages seems be- 



CH. III. SANITARY REFORM 323 

coming moie and more a State function^ bearing more 
and more the State stamp, and more and more sup- 
ported from public funds. 

This is one main cause of the increase of the revenue 
drawn by the Government from the people. There 
are others, on which we may, I think, look with more 
unhesitating approval. The great work of sanitary 
reform has been, perhaps, the noblest legislative 
achievement of our age, and, if measured by the suffer- 
ing it has diminished, has probably done far more for 
the real happiness of mankind than all the many ques- 
tions that make and unmake ministries. It received its 
first great impetus in the present century from the 
Public Health Act of 1848, and in our own generation 
it has been greatly and variously extended. There can 
be no nobler or wiser end for a statesman to follow 
than to endeavour to secure for the poor, as far as is 
possible, the same measure of life and health as for the 
rich. Among the many addresses that were presented 
to the Queen in her Jubilee year, none appeared to me 
so significant as that which was presented by the sani- 
tary inspectors, summing up what had been done in 
England during the first fifty years of the reign. They 
observed that the general health of Her Majesty's sub- 
jects had advanced far beyond that of any great State 
of Europe or of the United States ; that the mean 
duration of life of all the Queen's subjects had been 
augmented by three and a half years ; that in the last 
year's population of England and Wales there had been 
a saving of 84,000 cases of death, and of more than 
1,700,000 cases of sickness, over the average rates of 
death and sickness at the beginning of the reign ; that 
the death-rate of the home army had been reduced by 
more than half, and the death-rate of the Indian army 
by more than four-fifths. 



324 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. iii. 

All this cannot be done without the constant inter- 
vention of Government. On the subject of sanitary 
reform the case of the extreme individualist will always 
break down, for disease is most frequently of a con- 
tagious and epidemical character, and the conditions 
from which it springs can never be dealt w^ith except 
by general, organised, coercive measures. The real 
justification of the law imposing compulsory vaccina- 
tion on an unwilling subject is, not that it may save his 
life, but that it may prevent him from being a centre 
01 contagion to his neighbours. In all legislation 
about drainage, pollution of rivers, insanitary dwell- 
ings, the prevention of infection, and the establishment 
of healthy conditions of labour, spasmodic and indi- 
vidual efforts, unsupported by law, will always prove 
insufficient. As population increases, and is more and 
more massed in large towns ; as the competition for 
w^orking men^s houses within a limited area grQw\s more 
intense ; as industry takes forms Avhich bring great 
numbers of working-men and women under the same 
roof, and as multiplying schools increase the danger of 
children's epidemics, the need for coercive measures of 
sanitary regulation becomes more imperious. 

A Government can have no higher object than to 
raise the standard of national health, and it may do so 
in several different ways. It may do much to eiicou- 
rage those most fruitful and beneficial of all forms of 
research — research into the causes of disease and the 
methods of curing it. It may bring within the reach 
of the poorest class the medical knowledge and appli- 
ances w^hicli, in a ruder state of society, would be a 
monopoly of the rich. It may make use of the great 
technical knowledge at its command to establish quali- 
fications for medical practice which will restrain the 
quack, who trades on the fears and weaknesses of the 



CH. HI. SANITARY REFORM 325 

ignorant much as tlie professional money-lender does 
on tlieir improvidence and inexperience. It may also 
greatly raise the health of the community by measures 
preventing insanitary conditions of life^ noxious adul- 
terations, or the spread of contagion. 

In this, no doubt, as in other departments, there are 
qualifications to be made, dangers and exaggerations 
to be avoided. Sanitary reform is not wholly a good 
thing when it enables the diseased and feeble members 
of the community, who in another stage of society 
would have died in infancy, to grow up and become 
parent stocks, transmitting a weakened type or the 
taint of hereditary disease. The diminution of mor- 
tality which sanitary science effects is mainly in infant 
mortality, and infant mortality is a far less evil than 
adult mortality, and in not a few cases it is a blessing 
in disguise. It is true, too, that mere legislation in 
this, as in other fields, will prove abortive if it is not 
supported by an intelligent public opinion. As one of 
the wisest statesmen of our age has truly said, ' Sanitary 
instruction is even more essential than sanitary legisla- 
tion, for if in these matters the public knows what it 
wants, sooner or later the legislation will follow ; but 
the best laws, in a country like this, are waste paper if 
they are not appreciated and understood.' ^ 

It is possible that a Government, acting at the 
dictation of a profession which is strongly wedded to 
professional traditions and etiquette, and which at the 
same time deals with a subject very far removed from 
scientific certainty, may throw obstacles in the way of 
new treatments and remedies that may prove of great 
benefit to mankind. It is also possible, and, indeed, 
probable, that it may carry the system of regulation to 



Speeches and Addresses of Lord Derby ^ i. 176. 



326 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. in. 

an exaggerated extent. Some portions of the Factory 
Acts are open to this criticism^ though it will usually 
be found that in these cases other than sanitary con- 
siderations have entered into this legislation. It is, 
however, a universal rule that when a system of re- 
gulation has begun, it will tend to increase, and 
when men entrusted with sanitary reforms become a 
large profession, they will naturally aggrandise their 
power, exaggerate their importance, and sometimes 
become meddlesome and inquisitorial. M. Leon Say 
has lately pointed out the dangers of this scientific 
Protectionism, which is leading sanitarians to attempt 
to watch our lives in the minutest detail ; and another 
distinguished French authority has bluntly declared 
that a new ^89 will be needed against the tyranny of 
hygiene, in order to regain our liberty of eating and 
drinking, and to limit the incessant meddling of sani- 
tarians in our private lives. ^ Legislators constantly 
overlook the broad distinction between lines of con- 
duct that are injurious, but injurious only to those 
who follow them, and lines of conduct that can be 
clearly shown to produce danger or evil to the com- 
munity. In the latter case Government interference 
is always called for. In the former, in the case of 
adults there is at least a strong presumption against it. 
As a general rule, an adult man should regulate his 
own life, and decide for himself whether he will run 
exceptional risks with a view to exceptional rewards. 

But, when all this is admitted, there is hardly any 
other field in which Governments can do, or have 
done, so much to alleviate or prevent human suffering. 
Neither Governments nor their advisers are infallible ; 



' See an essay by M. Raffalovich in Mackay's Plea for Liberty^ 
p. 217. 



CH. III. REFORM OF CRIMINALS 327 

but in this case Governments act with the best lights 
that medical science can give, and they act, for the 
most ^M't, with perfect good faith, and without any 
possibility of party advantage. The prolongation of 
human life is much. The diminution or alleviation 
of disease and suffering is much more. Sanitary re- 
form cannot be effectually carried out without a heavy 
expenditure, wdiich is borne in the shape of taxes by 
the community. But, looking at this expenditure 
merely from an economical point of view, no expen- 
diture that a Government can make is more highly 
remunerative. Sir James Paget has estimated the loss 
of labour by the wage classes from excessive, pre- 
ventible sickness, at twenty millions of weeks per 
annum. Sir Edwin Oh ad wick writes : ' The burden 
of lost labour, of excessive mortality, and of excessive 
funerals from preventible causes were largely under- 
estimated in 1842 at two millions per annum in the 
Metropolis. In England and Wales, those same local 
burdens of lost labour and excessive sickness may now 
be estimated at upwards of twenty-eight million pounds 
per annum.^* 

A very similar line of reasoning may be employed to 
justify the great increase of national expenditure in 
England, and in most other countries, in the field of 
prisons and reformatories. The enormous improve- 
ments that have taken place in the prison system du- 
ring the present century have added largely to the 
expenditure of nations, but they have put an end to 
an amount of needless suffering, demoralisation, and 
waste of human character and faculty that it is difficult 
to overestimate. ' The best husbandry,^ as Grattan 
once said, * is the husbandry of the human creature.^ 



Chadwick on Umiy^ p. 63. 



328 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iii. 

To distinguish between crime that springs from 
strongly marked criminal tendency and crime that is 
due to mere unfavourable circumstances, or transient 
passion, or weakness of will ; to distinguish among 
genuine criminal tendencies between those which are 
still incipient and curable, and those which have ac- 
quired the force of an inveterate disease, is the basis of 
all sound criminal reform. It cannot be carried out 
without much careful classification and many lines of 
separate treatment. The agencies for reclaiming and 
employing juvenile criminals ; the separate treatment 
of intoxication ; the broad distinction drawn between 
a first offender and an habitual criminal ; the prison 
regulations that check the contagion of vice, have all 
had a good effect in reducing the amount of crime. 
Most of these things cost much, but they produce a 
speedy and ample return. Money is seldom better or 
more economically spent than in diminishing the sum 
of human crime and raising the standard of human 
character. In this case, as in the case of sanitary re- 
form, it may be truly said that legislators act under 
the best available advice and with perfect singleness of 
purpose. On such questions very few votes can be 
either gained or lost. 

The same thing cannot be said of all extensions of 
Government functions. ^N'o feature is more cha- 
racteristic of modern democracy than the tendency to 
regulate and organise by law countless industries which 
were once left to private initiative and arrangement ; 
to apply the machinery of the State to countless func- 
tions which were once discharged by independent bodies, 
or private benevolence, or co-operation. A vast increase 
in many forms of expenditure and in many different 
kinds of officials is the inevitable consequence, impos- 
ing great additional burdens on the taxpayer, and each 



CH. iir. EXTENSION OF GOVERNMENT FUNCTIONS 329 

new departure in the field of expenditure is usually 
made a precedent and a pretext for many otliers. I 
cannot go as far as Mr. Herbert Spencer and some 
other writers of his school in denouncing this as 
wholly evil, though I agree with them that the dan- 
gerous exaggerations and tendencies are chiefly on this 
side. Much of this increased elaboration of govern- 
ment seems to me inevitable. As civilisation becomes 
more highly organised and complex, as machinery 
increases and population and industries agglomerate, 
new wants, interests, and dangers arise, which im- 
periously require increased regulation. It is impos- 
sible to leave a great metropolis or a vast, fluctuating, 
industrial population with as little regulation as a 
country village or a pastoral people. Compare the old 
system of locomotion by a few coaches or waggons with 
our present railway system ; or our old domestic in- 
dustries with our present gigantic factories, stores and 
joint-stock companies ; or the old system of simple, 
isolated cesspools with the highly complex drainage on 
which the safety of our great towns depends, and it 
will be evident how much new restraining and regulat- 
ing legislation is required. The growth of philan- 
thropy, and the increasing light which the press throws 
on all the sides of a nation^'s life, make public opinion 
keenly sensible of much preventible misery it would 
have either never known or never cared for, and science 
discloses dangers, evils, and possibilities of cure of which 
our ancestors never dreamed. 

All these things produce a necessity for much ad- 
ditional regulation, and a strong pressure of public 
opinion for much more. If Governments, as distin- 
guished from private companies, have some disadvan- 
tages, they have also some important advantages. They 
can command a vast amount of technical skill. Thev 



330 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

can act with a simultaneity and authority, and on a 
scale which no private organisation can emulate, and 
in England, at least since the old system of patronage 
has been replaced by the present system of examination 
and constant control, the State can usually count upon a 
very large supply of pure and disinterested administra- 
tors. On some subjects Governments are much less 
likely than private companies to be deflected by corrupt 
or sinister motives, and an English Government has the 
great advantage of possessing the best credit in the 
world, which enables it to give many enterprises an 
unrivalled stability and security, and to conduct them 
with unusual economy. The application of British 
credit to schemes for the benefit of the poor, or the 
solution of great social questions, has of late years been 
largely extended, and seems likely steadily to advance. 
There is also some difference between the action of a 
representative Government, including, utilising, and 
commanding the best talent in all classes, and a 
despotic or highly aristocratic Government, which is 
in the hands of a few men, and acts under very little 
restraint and control, like a kind of Providence apart 
from the nation. 

In many departments the conveniences of State ac- 
tion are very great. Few persons, for example, would 
withdraw the post-office from Government hands. 
Private enterprise might perform its functions with 
equal efficiency in the chief centres of population, but 
Government alone could carry on the enterprise uni- 
formly and steadily, in all countries, in the districts 
that are unremunerative as well as in those which are 
profitable. It would be difficult to conceive a more 
flagrant violation of the English fetish of Free Trade 
than the regulation of cab fares by authority ; but the 
convenience of the system is so great that no one 



OH. III. SUCCESSFUL STATE ACTION 331 

wishes to abolish it. Banking for the benefit of pri- 
vate persons is certainly not a natural business of Go- 
vernment, but Government machinery and Government 
credit have built up a system of savings banks and 
post-office banks which has been a vast blessing to 
the poor, encouraging among them, to an eminent 
degree, providence and thrift, and at the same time 
giving them a direct interest in the stability of the 
Empire and the security of property. Few things 
have conferred more benefits on agriculture than tlie 
large sums which have been advanced to landlords for 
drainage, at a rate of interest sufficient to secure the 
State from loss, but lower than they could have ob- 
tained in a private market. Of all the schemes that 
have been formed for improving the condition of Ire- 
land, the most promising is that for the creation of a 
peasant-proprietary by means of loans issued at a rate 
of interest which the State, and the State alone, could 
command, and repaid by instalments in a defined num- 
ber of years. This is a type of legislation which is 
almost certain in the future to be widely and variously 
applied. 

All these excursions outside the natural sphere of 
Government influence should be carefully and jealously 
watched ; but there are some distinctions which should 
not be forgotten. Government enterprises which are 
remunerative stand on a different basis from those 
which must be permanently subsidised by taxation, or, 
in other words, by forced payments, in most cases 
largely drawn from those who are least benefited by 
them. If it be shown that the State management of 
some great enterprise can be conducted with efficiency, 
and at the same time made to pay its expenses ; if it 
can be shown that, by the excellent credit of the State, 
a State loan or a State guarantee can effect some useful 



332 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

change or call into being some useful enterprise with- 
out loss to the State or to its credit, a large |)ortion of 
the objections to this intervention will have been re- 
moved. It is also very important to consider whether 
the proposed intervention of the Government lies apart 
from the sphere of politics, or whether it may become 
a source or engine of corruption. It may do so by 
placing a large addition of patronage in the hands of 
the executive ; and it may do so still more dangerous- 
ly by creating new and corrupt reasons for giving or 
soliciting votes. Few persons, for example, can doubt 
that, if the Socialist policy of placing the great indus- 
tries of the country in the hands of municipalities 
were carried out, numbers of votes would be syste- 
matically given for the sole purpose of obtaining advan- 
tages for the workmen connected with these industries, 
at the cost of the community at large. 

Another element to be considered is, whether the 
things the State is asked to assist are of a kind that 
can flourish without its aid. There are forms of sci- 
ence and literature and research which can by no pos- 
sibility be remunerative, or at least remunerative in 
any proportion to the labour they entail or the ability 
they require. A nation which does not produce and 
does not care for these things can have only an inferior 
and imperfect civilisation. A Government grant which 
would appear almost infinitesimal in the columns of a 
modern Budget will do much to support and encourage 
them. Expenditure in works of art and art schools, 
in public buildings, in picture-galleries, in museums, 
adds largely to the glory and dignity of a nation and to 
the education of its people. It is continually increas- 
ing that common property which belongs alike to all 
classes ; and it is a truly democratic thing, for it makes 
it possible for the poor man to know and appreciate 



CH. III. LIMITS OF STATE ACTION 333 

works of art which, without State intervention, he 
would have never seen, and which would have been 
wholly in the hands of the rich and cultivated few. 
The total indifference of English Governments during 
a long period to artistic development is one of the 
great causes that art has flowered so tardily in Eng- 
land. 

In many countries in Europe dramatic art is assisted 
by subsidies to the opera and the classical theatre. 
Such subsidies stand on a different ground from those 
which I have just noticed, for they minister directly to 
the pleasures of the rich ; though a brilliant theatre, 
by drawing many strangers to the metropolis, probably 
ultimately benefits the poor. It is not likely that Eng- 
lish democratic opinion would tolerate an expenditure 
of this kind ; and it may be observed that the con- 
nection between Governments and amusement is much 
closer in most Continental countries than in England. 
In these countries a large portion of the money raised 
for the relief of the poor and the suffering is levied 
upon public amusements.^ 

The objections to the vast extension of State regula- 
tions and of State subsidies are very many. There is, 
in the first place, what may be called the argument of 
momentum, which Herbert Spencer has elaborated 
with consummate skill and force. ^ It is absolutely 
certain that, when this system is largely adopted, it 
will not remain within the limits which those who 
adopted it intended. It will advance with an accele- 
rated rapidity ; every concession becomes a precedent 
or basis for another step, till the habit is fully formed 
of looking on all occasions for State assistance or re- 



^ See Le droit des pauvres par Cros-Mayrevielle (1889). 
sur les spectacles en Europe^ ^ The 3Ian versus the State. 



334 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

striction, and till a weight of taxation and debt has 
been acciininlated from which the first advocates of the 
movement would have shrunk with horror. There is 
the weakening of private enterprise and pliilanthropy ; 
a lowered sense of individnal responsibility ; diminished 
love of freedom ; the creation of an increasing army of 
officials, regulating in all its departments the affairs of 
life ; the formation of a state of society in which vast 
multitudes depend for their subsistence on the bounty 
of the State. All this cannot take place without im- 
pairing the springs of self-reliance, independence, and 
resolution, without gradually enfeebling both the 
judgment and the character. It produces also a weight 
of taxation which, as the past experience of the world 
abundantly shows, may easily reach a point that means 
national ruin. An undue proportion of the means 
of the individual is forcibly taken from him by the 
State, and much of it is taken from the most indus- 
trious and saving, for the benefit of those who have 
been idle or improvident. Capital and industry leave 
a country where they are extravagantly burdened and 
have ceased to be j)i'ofitable, and even the land itself 
has often been thrown out of cultivation on account of 
the weight of an excessive taxation. 

The tendency to constantly increasing expenses in 
local taxation is, in some degree, curtailed by enact- 
ments of the Imperial Parliament limiting in various 
ways the powers which it concedes to local bodies of 
raising taxes or incurring debts. That the restrictions 
are very unduly lax, few good judges will question ; 
yet it is the constant effort of local bodies, which are 
under democratic influence, to extend their powers. 
Parliament itself is unlimited, and Parliament, on 
financial questions, means simply the House of Com- 
mons. The constituencies are the onlv check, but a 



cii. iir. ABUSES OF STATE ACTION 335 

vast proportion of the expenditure of the State is in- 
tended for the express purpose of bribing them. De- 
mocracy as it appeared in the days of Joseph Hume 
was pre-eminently a penurious thing, Jealously scruti- 
nising every item of public exj)enditure, denouncing 
as an intolerable scandal the extravagance of aristo- 
cratic government, and viewing with extreme disfavour 
every enlargement of the powers of the State. It has 
now become, in nearly all countries, a government of 
lavish expenditure, of rapidly accumulating debt, of 
constantly extending State action. 

It is, I believe, quite true that the functions of 
Government must inevitably increase with a more com- 
plicated civilisation. But, in estimating their enor- 
mous and portentously rapid aggrandisement within 
the last few years, there is one grave question which 
should always be asked. Is that aggrandisement due 
to a reasoned conviction that Government can wisely 
benefit, directly, different classes by its legislation ? or 
is it due to a very different cause — to the conviction 
that, by promising legislation in favour of different 
classes, the votes of those classes may most easily be 
won ? 

A large portion of the increased expenditure is also 
due, not to subsidies, but to the increased elaboration 
of administrative machinery required by the system of 
constant inspection and almost universal regulation. 
Nothing is more characteristic of the new democracy 
than the alacrity with which it tolerates, welcomes, 
and demands coercive Government interference in all 
its concerns. In the words of Mr. Goschen, ' The ex- 
tension of State action to new and vast fields of busi- 
ness, such as telegraphy, insurance, annuities, postal 
orders, and parcel post, is not the most striking fea- 
ture. What is of far deeper imjoort is its growing in- 



336 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

terference with the relations between classes^ its in- 
creased control over vast categories of transactions be- 
tween individuals. . . . The parent in dealing with 
his child, the employer in dealing with his workmen, 
the shipbuilder in tiie construction of his ships, the 
shipowner in the treatment of his sailors, the house- 
owner in the management of his house property, the 
landowner in his contracts with his tenants, have been 
notified by public opinion or by actual law that the 
time has gone by when the cry of laissez-nous faire 
would be answered in the affirmative. The State has 
determined what is right and wrong, what is expedient 
and inexpedient, and has appointed its agents to enforce 
its conclusions. Some of the highest obligations of hu- 
manity, some of the smallest businesses of everyday life, 
some of the most complicated transactions of our in- 
dustrial and agricultural organisations, have been taken 
in hand by the State. Individual responsibility has 
been lessened, national responsibility has been height- 
ened.^ ' 

^or can the change of tendency in this respect be 
measured merely by actual legislation. It is to be seen 
still more clearly in the countless demands for legisla- 
tive restriction that are multiplying on all sides ; in 
the Bills which, though not yet carried into law, have 
received a large amount of parliamentary support ; in 
the resolutions of trade-union congresses, or county 
councils, or philanthropic meetings or associations ; in 
the questions asked and the pledges exacted at every 
election ; in the great mass of socialistic or semi- 
socialistic literature that is circulating through the 
countrv. Few thins^s would have more astonished 



^ Laissez faire ; oy\ Government Interference^ by the Right Hon. 
G. Goschen. Address delivered at Edinburgli, 1883, p. 4. 



CH. III. GRADUATED TAXATION 337 

the old Radicals of the Manchester school than to be 
told that a strong leaning towards legislative compul- 
sion was soon to become one of the marked character- 
istics of an 'Advanced Liberal/ and 'all contracts to 
the contrary notwithstanding ' — a favourite clause in 
democratic legislation. 

Accompanying this movement, and naturally grow- 
ing out of the great change in the disposition of power, 
is the marked tendency to throw taxation to a greater 
extent on one class of- the community, in the shape of 
graduated taxation. In certain forms and to a certain 
measure this has always existed in England. The 
shameful exemption from taxation enjoyed by both 
nobles and clergy in nearly all Continental countries 
up to the eve of the French Revolution was unknown 
in England, and it had always been an English custom 
to impose special taxes on the luxuries of the rich. 
Tocqueville, in a remarkable passage, which has been 
often quoted, observed that ' for centuries the only 
inequalities of taxation in England were those which 
had been successively introduced in favour of the ne- 
cessitous classes. ... In the eighteenth century it 
was the poor who enjoyed exemption from taxation in 
England, in France it was the rich. In the one case, 
the aristocracy had taken upon its own shoulders the 
heaviest public charges in order to be allowed to govern. 
In the other case, it retained to the end an immunity 
from taxation in order to console itself for the loss of 
government.' ' Arthur Young, in a little speech which 
he made to a French audience at the beginning of the 
Revolution, described vividly the difference subsisting 
in this respect between the two countries. ' We have 
many taxes,' he said, 'in England which you know 



L'Ancien Regime, pp. 146-47. 

22 



338 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

nothing of in France, but the tiers iJtat — the poor — 
do not pay them. They are laid on the rich. Every 
window in a man^s house pays, but if he has no more 
than six windows he pays nothing. A seigneur with a 
great estate pays the vingtiemes and tallies, but the 
little proprietor of a garden pays nothing. The rich 
pay for their horses, their carriages, their servants, and 
even for liberty to kill their own partridges ; but the 
poor farmer pays nothing of this ; and, what is more, 
we have in England a tax paid by the rich for the re- 
lief of the poor.^ ^ Both the window-tax and the house- 
tax of the eighteenth century were graduated taxes, 
rising in an increased proportion according to the value 
of the dwelling. A similarly progressive scale of tax- 
ation was introduced by Pitt for carriages, pleasure- 
horses, and male servants, the duty on each of these 
rising rapidly according to the numbers in each estab- 
lishment. 

The doctrine that revenue should be raised chiefly 
from luxuries or superfluities has been very largely 
recognised in English taxation, and since the great 
fiscal reforms instituted by Sir Robert Peel it has been 
carried out to an almost complete extent. A working- 
man who is a teetotaller and who does not smoke is 
now almost absolutely untaxed, except in the form of a 
very low duty on tea and on coflee. In the opinion of 
many good judges, this movement of taxation, though 
essentially beneficent, has been carried, in England, to 
an exaggerated point. It is not right, they say, that 
any class should be entirely exempt from all share in 
the Imperial burden, especially when that class is en- 
trusted with political power, and has a considerable 
voice in imposing and adjusting the expenditure of the 



Pinkerton's Voyages^ iv. 200. 



ufl. III. EXEMPTIONS FROM TAXATION 339 

nation. Taxes on articles of universal consumption 
are by far the most productive. They ought always to 
be kept low^ for when they are heavy they produce not 
only hardships, but injustice, as the poor would then 
pay an unduly large proportion of the national reve- 
nue ; but, on the other hand, their complete repeal is 
a matter of very doubtful expediency. 

In England, however, the policy of absolutely abol- 
ishing the taxes on the chief objects of a poor man's 
necessary consumption has been steadily carried out by 
both parties in the State. Tory Governments abol- 
ished the salt duty in 1825 and (after many reductions) 
the sugar duty in 1874 ; while Liberal Governments 
abolished the coal duty and the tax on candles in 1831, 
the last vestige of the corn duty in 1869, the taxes on 
soap and on licenses for making it in 1853 and 1870. 
Both parties have also concurred in freeing nearly 
every article of a working-man^s attire, by removing 
the duties on wool, calico, and leather.' It may be 
questioned whether this policy has been carried to its 
present extreme because legislators believed it to be 
wise, or because they believed that it would prove popu- 
lar with the electors. Such measures furnish exactly 
the kind of topic that is most useful on the platform. 

There is another principle of taxation which has 
been advocated by Bentham and Mill, and which, be- 
fore their time, was propounded by Montesquieu. It 
is that a minimum income which is sufficient to secure 
to a labouring family of moderate size the bare neces- 
saries, though not the luxuries, of life, should remain 
exempt from all taxation. Strictly speaking, this prin- 
ciple is, no doubt, inconsistent with the imposition of 
taxation on any article of first necessity ; but it has 



Do well's History of Taxation. 



340 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

been largely adopted in England in the exemption of 
the poorest class of houses from taxation, and in the 
partial or complete exemption of small incomes from 
the income-tax. Successive Acts of Parliament have 
wholly freed incomes under 100/., under 150/., and un- 
der 160/. a year from the tax, and have granted abate- 
ments in the case of incomes under 200/., under 400/., 
and, finally, under 500/. a year. The large majority of 
the electors who return the members of the House of 
Commons now pay nothing to the income-tax. 

By all these measures a system of graduated taxation 
has steadily grown up. A few lines from a speech made 
by Lord Derby in 1885 give a clear picture of what in 
his day had been done. ' Take the income-tax. We 
exempt altogether incomes up to a certain point, and 
we exempt them partially up to a higher point. Take 
the house-tax. What have you got there ? Total 
exemption of all that class of houses in which working- 
men usually live. Take the death duties. They abso- 
lutely spare property below a certain limited amount. 
Take the carriage-tax. The class of conveyances used 
by poor persons, or used otherwise than for purposes of 
pleasure, are made specially free of charge. Take the 
railway-passenger tax. It falls on first and second class 
passengers, and leaves the third class untouched. . . . 
In our poor law, now 300 years old, we have adopted a 
system so socialistic in principle that no Continental 
Government would venture even to look at it.^^ 

Articles of luxury or ostentation used exclusively by 
the rich are, in many instances, specially taxed. Such, 
for example, are the taxes on armorial bearings, on the 
more expensive qualities of wine, on menservants, and 
on sporting. In some cases taxes of this kind have 



The Times^ November 2, 1885. 



CH. III. PRINCIPLE OF JUST TAXATION 341 

been abolished^ because the expense of collecting tliem^ 
or the expense of distinguishing between the better and 
the cheaper descriptions of a single article, made them 
nearly wholly unproductive. But, on the whole, the 
strong leaning of our present system in favour of the 
poor cannot reasonably be questioned ; and it becomes 
still more apparent when we consider not merely tlie 
sources, but the application, of the taxes. The pro- 
tection of life, industry, and even property, is quite as 
important to the poor man as to the rich, and the most 
costly functions which Governments have of late years 
assumed are mainly for his benefit. Primary educa- 
tion, the improvement of working-men^s dwellings, 
factory inspection, savings banks, and other means of 
encouraging thrift, are essentially poor men^s questions. 

Adam Smith, in a well-known passage, has laid down 
the principle on which, in strict equity, taxation should 
be levied. ' The subjects of every State ought to con- 
tribute to the support of the Government as nearly as 
possible in proportion to their respective abilities ; that 
is, in proportion to the revenue which they respectively 
enjoy under the protection of the State. The expense 
of government to the individuals of a great nation is 
like the expense of management to the joint-tenants of 
a great estate, who are all obliged to contribute in pro- 
portion to their respective interests in the estate."^ 

According to this principle, the man with 1,000/. a 
year should pay ten times the taxes of a man with 100/. 
a year, and the man with 10,000/. a year ten times the 
taxes of a man with 1,000/. a year. In the words of 
Thiers, ' Every kind of revenue, without exception, 
ought to contribute to the needs of the State, for all 
depend upon it for their existence. Every exemption 

' Wealth of Nations^ Book v. chapter ii. 



342 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

from taxation is an injustice. . . . The true principle, 
wMch Avas established in 1789, is that every man, with- 
out exception, in proportion to what he gains or what 
he possesses, should contribute. To exempt labour in 
order to strike ])vo]}eYty, or to tax property in exor- 
bitant proportions, would only be to add a new" iniquity 
as great as that which was abolished in 1T89. . . . 
Society is a company of mutual insurance, in which 
each man should pay the risk in proportion to the 
amount of property insured. If he has insured a house 
of the value of 100,000 francs (the rate being 1 per 
cent.), he owes 1,000 francs to the company. If the 
insured house is worth a million, he ow^es 10,000 francs. 
. . . Society is a company, in which each man has 
more or less shares, and it is just that each should pay 
in proportion to their number, whether they be ten, or 
100, or 1,000, but ahvays according to the same rate 
imposed on all. There should be one rule for all, 
neither more nor less. To abandon this would be as 
if a merchant were to say to his customers, " You are 
richer than your neighbour, and must therefore pay 
more for the same goods. ^^ It would only lead to end- 
less confusion, and open out boundless, incalculable, 
possibilities of arbitrary imposition.^ ^ 

The great majority of serious economists have, I be- 
lieve, agreed that, as a matter of strict right, this doc- 
trine is the true one. Adam Smith, however, clearly 
saw that human affairs cannot, or will not, be governed 
by the strict lines of economic science, and he fully 
recognised that it may be expedient that taxes should 
be so regulated that the rich should pay in proportion 
something more than the poor. In England, the sys- 
tem of graduated taxation which I have described has 



I La Propriete^ livre iv. chaps, ii. 



CH. III. GRADUATED TAXATION 343 

passed fully into the national habits, and is accepted 
by all parties. The taxation of luxuries, as distin- 
guished from necessaries, has been productive of much 
good, and is much less liable than other forms of gradu- 
ated taxation to abuse. The exemption of small in- 
comes from all direct taxation undoubtedly brings with 
it grave dangers, especially when those who are ex- 
empted form the bulk of the electorate, and are thus 
able to increase this taxation to an indefinite extent, 
without any manifest sacrifice to themselves. At the 
same time, few persons will object to these exemptions, 
provided they are kept within reasonable limits, are 
intended solely as measures of relief, and do not lead to 
lavish expenditure. It does not necessarily follow that, 
because a class are a minority in the electorate, they 
are in grave danger of being unduly taxed. As long as 
they still form a sufficiently considerable portion to 
turn the balance in elections, they have the means of 
vindicating their rights. It is the duty of the Govern- 
ment to provide that the taxes are moderate in amount, 
and are levied for the hond fide purpose of discharging 
functions which are necessary or highly useful to the 
State. There is, however, another conception of taxa- 
tion, which has of late years been rapidly growing. It 
has come to be regarded as a socialistic weapon, as an 
instrument of confiscation, as a levelling agent for 
breaking down large fortunes, redistributing wealth, 
and creating a new social type. 

The growing popularity of graduated taxation in the 
two forms of an exemption of the smaller incomes from 
all direct taxation, and of the taxation of large incomes 
on a different scale or percentage from moderate ones, 
is very evident, and it is accompanied by an equally 
strong tendency towards a graduated taxation of capi- 
tal and successions. Precedents may, no doubt, be 



344 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cir. iii. 

found in earlier times. A graduated income-tax ex- 
isted in ancient Athens^ and was warmly praised by 
Montesquieu. Graduated taxation was imposed with 
much severity and elaborated with great ingenuity in 
Florence in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and sixteenth 
centuries. But it is chiefly of late years, and since 
democratic influence has predominated, that the ques- 
tion of graduated taxation has been pushed into the 
forefront. It exists, though only to a very moderate 
degree, in Prussia and most of the German States, and 
a Prussian law of 1883 considerably enlarged the num- 
ber of exemptions.^ It prevails in slightly different 
forms in a large number of the Swiss cantons, and 
especially in the cantons of A^aud, Zurich, Geneva, Uri, 
and the Grisons. Thus, in the Canton de Vaud real 
property is divided into three classes — properties of a 
value not exceeding 1,000^., properties that are valued 
between 1,000/. and 4,000Z., and proiDcrties of a value 
above 4,000/. The first class are taxed at the rate of 
1/., the second at the rate of 1/. 10s., and the third at 
the rate of 21. per 1,000/. Personal property is divided 
into seven classes, each of them taxed at a separate rate. 
Fortunes exceeding in capital value 32,000/., and in- 
comes exceeding 1,600/., are subject to the highest 
rate. In Zurich a different system is adopted. Though 
both capital and income are progressively taxed, the 
rate of that tax is the same for all, but the amount 
liable to taxation becomes proportionately larger as the 
fortune or the income increases. Thus, five-tenths of 
the first 800/. of a capital fortune, six-tenths of the 
next 1,200/., seven- tenths of the next 2,000/., eight- 



' Leroy-Beaulieu, Traiie des Fiixances^ i. 139-74; Say, Solutions 
Democratiques de la Question des InnJots^ ii. 184-224:. 



CH. III. GRADUATED TAXATION 345 

tenths of the next 4,000/.^ and' ten-tenths of anything 
above it^, are taxed. ^ 

In the Netherlands the capital value of every fortune 
has^ by a recent law^ to be annually stated^ and it is 
taxed according to that value on a graduated scale. 
Ten thousand florins are untaxed ; after that the tax 
on capital gradually rises from one to two in a thou- 
sand. There is also a progressive tax on revenue, but 
with exemptions intended to j)revent capital from being 
twice taxed. In New Zealand and the Australian colo- 
nies there is much graduated taxation, chiefly directed 
against the growth of large landed properties. In Xew 
Zealand the ordinary land-tax is thrown upon 12,000 
out of 90,000 owners of land. There is an additional 
and graduated land-tax on properties which, after de- 
ducting the value of improvements, are worth 5,000/. 
and upwards. It rises from Id. to 2d. in the pound, 
and there is also a special and graduated tax on absen- 
tees. The income-tax is (5d. in the pound on the first 
taxable 1,000Z., and 1.5. in the pound on higher rates.' 
In Victoria there is a graduated succession duty, vary- 
ing from 1 to 10 per cent.^ In France the question of 
graduated, or, as it is called, progressive, taxation has 
of late been much discussed ; but, with the exception 
of a graduated house-tax,'^ attempts in this direction 
have, until quite recently, been defeated. In the United 
States, as I have noticed in a former chapter, proposals 
for graduated taxation have received a serious check 
in the decision of the Supreme Court in 1894, which 
appears to establish that, in the imposition of direct 
Federal taxation, the Congress must only recognise 



' See a Foreign Office Report Book, 1894, pp. 245-47. 
on Graduated Taxation in Swit- ^Dilke's Prohlems of Greater 

zerland (1892). Britain, ii. 277. 

- J\^ew Zealand Official Year ^ Ibid. pp. 278-79. 



346 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iit. 

State divisions and the number of citizens. During 
the war of secession^ however, a graduated income-tax 
for a short time existed. The first war income-tax, 
which was established in 1861, taxed all incomes above 
800 dollars at the same rate ; but the second income- 
tax, which was enacted in July 1862, established a 
system of graduation, which was, however, nearly all 
repealed in 1865. The English Budget of 1894 went far 
in the direction of graduated taxation, both by the ad- 
ditional exemptions granted in the income-tax and by 
the new system of graduation. 

Recent discussions have made the arguments which 
have been adduced by economists against graduated 
taxation very familiar. It is obvious that a graduated 
tax is a direct penalty imposed on saving and industry, 
a direct premium offered to idleness and extravagance. 
It discourages the very habits and qualities which it 
is most in the interest of the State to foster, and it is 
certain to operate forcibly where fortunes approach the 
limits at which a higher scale of taxation begins. It is 
a strong inducement at that period, either to cease to 
work or to cease to save. It is at the same time per- 
fectly arbitrary. When the principle of taxing all for- 
tunes on the same rate of computation is abandoned, 
no definite rule or principle remains. At what point 
tlie higher scale is to begin, or to what degree it is to 
be raised, depends wholly on the policy of Governments 
and the balance of parties. The ascending scale may 
at first be very moderate, but it may at any time, when 
fresh taxes are required, be made more severe, till it 
reaches or approaches the point of confiscation. No 
fixed line or amount of graduation can be maintained 
upon principle, or with any chance of finality. The 
whole matter will depend upon the interests and wishes 
of the electors ; upon party politicians seeking for a 



CH. III. GRADUATED TAXATION 347 

cry and competing for the Totes of very poor and very 
ignorant men. Under such a system all large proper- 
ties may easily be made unsafe^ and an insecurity may 
arise which will be fatal to all great financial under- 
takings. The most serious restraint on parliamentary 
extravagance will^ at the same time, be taken away, 
and majorities will be invested with the easiest and 
most powerful instrument of oppression. Highly gra- 
duated taxation realises most completely the supreme 
danger of democracy, creating a state of things in 
which one class imposes on another burdens which it 
is not asked to share, and impels the State into vast 
schemes of extravagance, under the belief that the 
whole cost will be thrown upon others. 

The belief is, no doubt, very fallacious, but it is very 
natural, and it lends itself most easily to the clap-trap 
of dishonest politicians. Such men will have no diffi- 
culty in drawing impressive contrasts between the luxu- 
ry of the rich and the necessities of the poor, and in 
persuading ignorant men that there can be no harm in 
throwing great burdens of exceptional taxation on a 
few men, who will still remain immeasurably richer 
than themselves. Yet, no truth of political economy 
is more certain than that a heavy taxation of capital, 
which starves industry and employment, will fall most 
severely on the poor. Graduated taxation, if it is ex- 
cessive or frequently raised, is inevitably largely drawn 
from capital. It discourages its accumulation. It 
produces an insecurity which is fatal to its stability, and 
it is certain to drive great masses of it to other lands. 

The amount to be derived from this species of taxa- 
tion is also much exaggerated. The fortunes of a few 
millionaires make a great show in the world, but they 
form in reality a very insignificant sum, compared 
with the aggregate of moderate fortunes and small sav- 



348 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

ings. Unless the system of graduation be extended, as 
in Switzerland^ to very moderate fortunes^ it will pro- 
duce little, and even then the exemptions that accom- 
pany it will go far to balance it. It is certain, too, that 
it will be largely evaded. There is, it is true, a great 
distinction to be drawn in this respect between real 
and personal property. Land is of such a nature that 
it cannot escape the burden which is imposed on it, 
but there are many ways in which personal property 
can escape. Confidential arrangements between mem- 
bers of a family or partners in a business, foreign in- 
vestments payable to foreign bankers, an increasing 
portion of wealth sunk in life annuities, insurances 
made in companies that are not subject to British taxa- 
tion, securities payable to bearer, which it will be im- 
possible to trace, will all multij^ly, and the frauds that 
are so much complained of in income-tax returns will 
certainly increase. Xo graver error can be made by 
a financier than to institute a system which is so bur- 
densome and so unjust that men will be disposed to 
employ all their ingenuity to evade it. With the vast 
and various field of international investment that is 
now open to them they are sure, in innumerable in- 
stances, to succeed, and no declaration, no oath, no 
penalty will effectually prevent it. Taxation is. ul- 
timately, the payment whicli is made by the subject 
for the security and other advantages which he derives 
from the State. If the taxation of one class is out of 
all proportion to the cost of the protection tliey enjoy ; 
if its members are convinced that it is not an equitable 
payment, but an exceptional and confiscatory burden 
imposed upon them by an act of power because they 
are politically weak, very many of them will have no 
more scruple in defrauding the Government than they 
would have in deceiving a highwayman or a burglar. 



GH. III. GRADUATED TAXATION 349 

It would be pressing these arguments too far to 
maintain that a graduated scale of taxation is always 
and necessarily an evil. In tliis^ as in most political 
questions, much will depend upon circumstances and 
degrees. It is, however, sufficiently clear that any 
financier who enters on this field is entering on a 
path surrounded with grave and various dangers. 
Graduated taxation is certain to be contao-ious. and it 
is certain not to rest within the limits that its origina- 
tors desired. Xo one who clearlv reads the sisuis of 
the times as they are shown in so many lands can doubt 
that this system of taxation is likely to increase. It 
would be hardly possible that it should be otherwise 
when political power is placed mainly in the hands of 
the working-classes ; when vast masses of landed pro- 
perty are accumulated in a few hands ; when profession- 
al politicians are continually making changes in the 
incidence of taxation a prominent part of their elec- 
tioneering programmes ; when almost every year en- 
larges the functions, and therefore the expenditure, 
of the State ; when nearly all the prevalent Utopias 
take a socialistic form, and point to an equalisation of 
conditions by means of taxation. Under such condi- 
tions the temptation to enter upon this path becomes 
almost invincible. 

It is a question of great importance to consider to 
what result it is likely to lead. To suppose that any 
system of taxation can possibly produce a real equality 
of fortunes, or prevent the accumulation of great 
Avealth, seems to me wholly chimerical ; though it is 
quite possible that legislators in aiming at these objects 
may ruin national credit, and bring about a period of 
rapid commercial decadence. Highly graduated taxa- 
tion, however, is likely to have great political and social 
effects in transforming the character of wealth. It will 



350 DEMOCEACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

probably exercise a special influence on landed property, 
breaking up or greatly diminishing those vast estates 
which are so distinctive a feature of English life. The 
tendencies which are in operation acting in this direc- 
tion are very powerful. Land, as it is at present held 
by the great proprietors, is usually one of the least 
profitable forms of property. The political influence 
attached to it has greatly diminished. The magisteri- 
al and other administratiye functions, that once gave 
the great landlord an almost commanding influence in 
his county, are being steadily taken away, and county 
government in all its forms is passing into other hands. 
If government is effectually divorced from property, 
and if a system of graduated taxation intended to 
equalise fortunes becomes popular, great masses of 
immovable land must become one of the most unde- 
sirable forms of property. Xo other excites so much 
cupidity, or is so much exposed to predatory legisla- 
tion, tnder all these circumstances, we may expect 
to see among the great landowners a growing desire to 
diminish gradually their stake in the land, thus re- 
versing the tendency to agglomeration which for many 
generations has been dominant. 

The change, in my opinion, will not be wholly evil. 
It is not a natural thing that four or five country places 
should be lield by one man ; that whole counties should 
be included in one gigantic property ; that square miles 
of territory should be enclosed in a single park. The 
scale of luxury and exj^enditure in English country 
life is too high. The machinery of life is too cumber- 
some. Its pleasures are costly out of all proportion to 
the enjoyment they give. Xor, on the other hand, is 
it desirable that great landed properties should be held 
together when the fixed and necessary charges are so 
great that they become overwhelming whenever agri- 



CH. III. ENGLISH COUNTRY LIFE 351 

cultural depression, or any other form of adversity, 
arrives, while the girls and younger children of the 
family are left to a poverty which seems all the more 
acute from the luxurious surroundings in which they 
have been brought up. If the result of graduated tax- 
ation should be to produce a more equal division of 
property between the members of a family ; if rich men, 
instead of making an allowance to their sons, should 
seek to avoid death duties by capitalising and at once 
handing over the amount ; if the preservation of game 
should be on a less extravagant scale ; if estates should 
become smaller and less encumbered, and the habits of 
great country houses somewhat less luxurious than at 
present, these things would not injure the country. 

Other consequences, however, of a far less desirable 
character are certain to ensue, and they are conse- 
quences that will fall more heavily upon the poor than 
upon the rich. Only a very small fraction of the ex- 
penditure of a great landowner can be said to contri- 
bute in any real degree to his own enjoyment. The 
vast cost of keeping up a great place, and the scale of 
luxurious hospitality which the conventionalities of 
society impose, count for much. Parks maintained 
at great expense, and habitually thrown open to public 
enjoyment ; the village school, or church, or institute 
established and endowed ; all local charities, all county 
enterprises largely assisted ; costly improvements, which 
no poor landlord could afford ; much work given for the 
express purpose of securing steady employment to the 
poor, — these things form the largest items in the budget 
of many of the great landowners. Nor should we omit 
to mention remissions of rent in times of depression 
which no poor man could afford to make, and very low 
rents kept unchanged during long periods of increasing 
prosperity. 



352 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

Ill every considerable class there will be the good and 
the bad, the generous and the grasping ; but, on the 
whole, no candid man will deny the extremely liberal 
spirit in which the large landed properties in England 
have been administered. "Whatever ultimate benefits 
may be obtained by their dissolution, it is certain that 
the first effect will be to extinguish great centres of 
beneficence and civilisation, to diminish employment, 
to increase the severity of contracts, and in many other 
ways to curtail the pleasures and augment the hard- 
ships of the deserving poor. It is often said that 
wealthy Americans, not having the ambition of found- 
ing families, give more than wealthy Englishmen for 
public purposes ; but I believe that an examination of 
the unselfish expenditure of the larger English land- 
lords on objects connected with their estates would 
show that they in this respect fall little, if at all, below 
the Transatlantic example. It is, probably, only in 
England that we frequently see the curious sj)ectacle 
of men with incomes of several thousands a year over- 
whelmed by lifelong pecuniary troubles, not because of 
any improvidence, or luxurious habits or tastes, but 
simply because their incomes are insufficient to bear 
the necessary expenses of their great position. 

It seems likely, under the influences I have described, 
that a great change, both for good and evil, will take 
place. Land will probably, in future, be more divided, 
will change hands more frequently, will be treated in a 
more purely commercial spirit than in the past. Coun- 
try places taken for mere pleasure, and unconnected 
with any surrounding property or any landlord duties, 
will be more frequent. It is not probable that yeomen 
farmers will multiply as long as it is economically more 
advantageous for a farmer to rent than to purchase his 
farm ; but land will be bought and sold more frequently, 



CH. III. PROBABLE CHANGES 353 

ill moderate quantities^ as a speculation, let at its ex- 
treme value, and divested of all tlie feudal ideas that 
are still connected with it. The old historic houses 
will, no doubt, remain, but they will remain, like the 
French castles along the Loire, memories of a state of 
society that has passed away. Many will be in the 
hands of rich merchants or brewers, and perhaps 
American millionaires. They Avill often be shut up, 
as a measure of economy, for long periods. They will 
no longer be the centres of great landed properties, or 
represent a great county influence or a long train of 
useful duties. Parks will be divided. Picture-gal- 
leries will be broken up. Many noble works of art 
will cross the Atlantic. The old type of English 
country life will be changed, and much of its ancient 
beauty will have passed away. 

Assuming, as is most probable, that these changes 
are effected gradually and without violent convulsion, 
they by no means imply the impoverishment of those 
who are now the great landed proprietors. No one can 
doubt that, at the preseiit day, the members of this 
class would be better off if they had less land and more 
money ; if their properties were in such forms that 
they had more pov/er of modifying their expenditure 
according to their means. They will have to pass 
through a trying period of transition, but, as they are 
remarkably free from the prejudices and narrow con- 
ventionalities that incapacitate some Continental aris- 
tocracies in the battle of life, they will, probably, soon 
adapt themselves to their new circumstances. With 
ordinary good fortune, with skilful management, with 
the rich marriages they can always command, with the 
excellent legal advice that is always at their disposal, 
they will probably succeed in many instances in keep- 
ing together enormous fortunes, and the time is far 



354 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

distant when a really able man, bearing an historic 
name, does not find that name an assistance to him in 
his career. But the class will have lost their territorial 
influence. Public life, dominated, or at least largely 
influenced, by professional politicians of the American 
type, will become more distasteful to them. They will 
find themselves with few landlord or county duties, 
and with much less necessary hospitality to perform, 
and they will probably content themselves with smaller 
country establishments, and spend much more of their 
time in brighter lands beyond the sea. 

The effects of highly graduated taxation on personal 
property will also be considerable, but probably not so 
great as on real projDerty. It will strengthen the dis- 
position of a rich man to divide as much as possible his 
investments, as all great masses of homogeneous, im- 
movable property will become sj)ecially insecure. It 
will, in this respect, increase a movement very dan- 
gerous to English commercial supremacy, which labour 
troubles and organisations have already produced . Most 
good observers have come to the conclusion that an ap- 
preciable influence in the commercial depression of the 
last few years has been the reluctance of rich men to 
embark on extensive enterprises at a time when labour 
troubles are so acute, so menacing, and so likely to 
exercise an influence on legislation. Far-seeing men 
hesitate to commit themselves to undertakings wliich 
can only slowly arrive at maturity when they see the 
strong bias of popular legislation against property, and 
the readiness with which a considerable number of 
modern statesmen will j^urchase a majority in the 
House of Commons by allying themselves with the 
most dishonest groups, and countenancing the most 
subversive theories. Every influence which, in any 
department of industrial life, increases risks and di- 



CH. III. DIVIDED WEALTH 355 

minislies profits must necessarily divert capital, and, 
whatever other consequences may flow from the fre- 
quent strikes and the formidable labour organisations 
of our time, it cannot be denied that they have both 
of these effects. If, in addition to these things, it 
becomes the policy of Governments to seek to defray 
national expenditure more and more by exceptional 
taxation, levied for the sake of popularity exclusively 
on the rich, the tendency to abstain from large manu- 
facturing and commercial enterprises will be greatly 
accentuated. Such enterprises will not cease, but they 
will become less numerous. Many manufacturers will 
probably follow the example which some have already 
set, and throw out branch establishments in foreign 
countries. A manufacturer who has some thousand 
pounds on hand, instead of employing them, as he 
Avould once have done, in extending his business, will 
be inclined to divide them in distant investments. It 
need scarcely be pointed out how dangerous all this is 
to a country which has a population much beyond its 
natural resources, and mainly dependent upon the 
enormous, unflagging, ever-extending manufacturing 
and commercial enterprise which vast accumulations 
and concentrations of capital can alone produce. 

Another consequence, which has, perhaps, not been 
sufficiently considered, is the tendency of large fortunes 
to take forms which bring with them no clear and defi- 
nite duties. The English landed system, which seems 
now gradually passing away, had, to a very eminent 
degree, associated great fortunes and high social po- 
sition with an active life spent in the performance of 
a large number of administrative county and landlord 
duties. It in this way provided, perhaps as far as any 
social institution can provide, that the men who most 
powerfully influence others by their example should on 



356 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cm. in. 

the whole lead useful^ active, and patriotic lives. A 
great manufacturer and the head of a great commercial 
undertaking is still more eminently a man whose wealth 
is indissolubly connected with a life of constant and 
useful industry. 

Wealth, however, takes many other forms than these, 
and, if I mistake not, a conspicuous characteristic of 
our century has been the rapid multiplication of the 
idle rich. In the conditions of modern life it is quite 
possible for a man to have a colossal fortune in forms 
that require absolutely no labour, and bring with them 
no necessary or obvious duties. If he is content with 
the low rate of interest of the very best securities, he 
need scarcely give a thought to the sources of his in- 
come. If, as is probable, the whole or a portion of his 
fortune is invested in more speculative securities, it 
will require from him some time and thought, but it 
will not necessarily bring with it any imperative duties 
towards his fellow-creatures. It is true that a rich man 
of this kind is in reality a large employer of labour. 
As a shareholder he is part proprietor of railroads, 
steam-packets, dockyards, mines, and many other wide- 
ly different, and probably widely scattered, industrial 
enterprises and organisations. But he has no real 
voice in the management of these concerns. He knows 
nothing of the conditions of the countless labourers 
who, in many countries and many climes, are toiling 
for his profit. He looks on his investments simply as 
sources of income. His sole information concerning 
them is probably confined to a fcAV statistics about 
dividends, traffic returns, encumbrances, and trade 
prospects. 

We are all familiar with great numbers of more or 
less wealthy men whose fortunes are of this description. 
Under the influences that I have described such for- 



CH. III. WEALTH DISSOCIATED FROM LABOUR 357 

tunes seem to me likely to multiply. The tendency of 
most great forms of industry is evidently towards vast 
joint-stock companies with many shareholders. With 
improved means of communication, the securities and 
enterprises of many countries are easily thrown into a 
common market, and national and municipal debts, 
which create one of the easiest and most important 
forms of investment, are rapidly increasing. One of 
the first signs that a barbarous nation is adopting the 
manners of Occidental civilisation is, usually, the crea- 
tion of a national debt, and democracies are certainly 
showing themselves in no degree behind the most ex- 
travagant monarchies in the rapidity with which they 
accumulate national and local indebtedness. Nor 
should we forget the effect which frequent revolutions 
and violent social and industrial i^erturbations always 
exercise on the disposition of fortunes. These things 
seldom fail to depress credit, to increase debt, to de- 
stroy industry, to impoverish nations ; but they also 
furnish many opportunities by which the skilful, the 
fortunate, and the unscrupulous rise rapidly to easily 
acquired wealth. If we take them in conjunction with 
the influences that are in so many directions dissociat- 
ing great wealth from landed property and adminis- 
trative functions, and adding to the risks of extensive 
industrial undertakings, it will appear probable that 
the fortunes of the future will be much less connected 
with active duties than those of the past. 

The prospect is not an encouraging one. A man of 
very superior powers will, no doubt, always find his 
work, and to such a man a fortune of this description 
will be an incalculable blessing. It will save him from 
years of drudgery and anxiety, and it will give him at 
the outset of his career the priceless advantage of inde- 
pendence. To men of lofty moral qualities it will at 



858 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

least be no injuiy. Such men will feel strongly the ina- 
lienable responsibilities of wealth, and will find in the 
fields of social and philanthropic activity ample scope for 
their exertions. Many, too, who are not men of conspi- 
cuous mental or moral force will have some strong taste 
for art, or literature, or country pursuits, or science, or 
research, which will secure for them useful and honour- 
able lives. Yet it can scarcely be doubted that even 
these will always be exceptions. The majority of men 
fail to find their work unless it is brought before them 
prominently by circumstances, or forced upon them by 
the strong pressure of necessity. Wealth which brings 
with it no ties and is obtained and enjoyed with no 
effort is to most men a temptation and a snare. All 
the more dissipated capitals and watering-places of 
Europe and America are full of examples of men in 
this position, living lives of absolute frivolity, disso- 
ciated from all serious interests, ever seeking with 
feverish eagerness for new forms of pleasure, raising the 
standard of luxury and ostentation, and often, in still 
graver ways, depressing the moral tone of the society 
in which they live. 

Considerations of this kind will probably be treated 
with much disdain by Radical critics. They will truly 
say, that the section of society referred to forms only a 
very small portion of the population, and they will ask 
whether nations are to frame their institutions with 
the object of providing occupation for the spoilt chil- 
dren of fortune, and saving them from their own fri- 
volity or vice. No one, I suppose, would maintain 
that they should do so ; but, in estimating the ad- 
vantages and disadvantages of different institutions, 
many weights enter into either scale which would not 
of themselves be sufficient to turn the balance. It is, 
however, a grave error to suppose that the evils I have 



CH. III. DEMOCRACY AND WEALTH 359 

described can be confined to the classes who are imme- 
diately concerned. It is impossible that the upper 
class of a nation can become corrupt, frivolous, or 
emasculated without affecting deeply and widely the 
whole body of the community. Constituted as human 
nature is, rich men will always contribute largely to 
set the tone of society, to form the tastes, habits, ideals 
and aspirations of other classes. In this respect, as in 
many others, the gradual dissociation of the upper 
classes from many forms of public duty is likely to 
prove a danger to the community. 

It is an evil which appears wherever democracy be- 
comes ascendant, though its progress varies much in 
different countries. The strong traditions, the firmly 
knit organisation of English life, has hitherto resisted 
it much more effectively than most nations. No one 
can say that the upper classes in England have as yet 
abandoned politics. Those who fear this change may 
derive some consolation from observing how largely 
the most Eadical Cabinets of our time have consisted 
of peers and connections of peers, and from counting 
up the many thousands of pounds at which the average 
private incomes of their members may be estimated. 
Nor, indeed, can it be said that English democracy, on 
either side of the Atlantic, shows any special love for a 
Spartan, or Stoical, or Puritan simplicity. ' Mr. Cecil 
Rhodes once described a prominent politician as ^a 
cynical sybarite who was playing the demagogue ' ; and 
it must be owned that professions of a very austere 
democracy have not unfrequently been found united 
with the keenest appetite for wealth, for pleasure, and 
even for titles. The political and economical influ- 
ences, however, which I have endeavoured to trace 
have established in England, as elsewhere, a tendency 
which is not the less real because it has not yet tri- 



360 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. hi. 

umphed, and the experience of American political and 
municipal life throws much light nj)on the path along 
which we are moving. The change in the House of 
Commons is becoming visible to every eye^ and one of 
the most important questions for the future is the pos- 
sibility of maintaining an Upper Chamber as a perma- 
nent and ]30werful element in the Constitution. 



GOVERNMENT BY ONE CHAMBER 361 



CHAPTER IV 

ARISTOCRACIES AND UPPER CHAMBERS 

Of all the forms of government that are possible among 
mankind^ I do not know any which is likely to be 
worse than the government of a single, omnipotent, 
democratic Chamber. It is at least as snsceptible as 
an individual despot to the temptations that grow out 
of the possession of an uncontrolled power, and it is 
likely to act with much less sense of responsibility and 
much less real deliberation. The necessity of making 
a great decision seldom fails to weigh heavily on a 
single despot, but when the responsibility is divided 
among a large assembly, it is greatly attenuated. Every 
considerable assembly, also, as it has been truly said, 
has at times something of the character of a mob. Men 
acting in crowds and in public, and amid the passions 
of conflict and of debate, are strangely different from 
what they are when considering a serious question in 
the calm seclusion of their cabinets. Party interests 
and passions ; personal likings or dislikes ; the power 
of rhetoric ; the confusion of thought that springs from 
momentary impressions, and from the clash of many 
conflicting arguments ; the compromises of principle 
that arise from attempts to combine for one purpose 
men of different opinions or interests ; mere lassitude, 
and mere caprice, all act powerfully on the decisions 
of an assembly. Many members are entangled by 
pledges they had inconsiderately given, by some prin- 
ciple they had admitted without recognising the full 



362 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

extent to wliicli it might be carried, or by some line of 
conduct tliey bad at another period pursued. Personal 
interest plays no small part : for the consequence and 
pecuniary interests of many members are bound up 
with the triumph of their party, while many others 
desire beyond all things a renewal of their mandate. 
They know that a considerable part of the constitu- 
encies to which they must ultimately appeal is com- 
posed of fluctuating masses of very ignorant men, easily 
swayed by clap-trap, by appeals to class interests or 
class animosities, and for the most part entirely inca- 
pable of disentangling a difficult question, judging dis- 
tant and obscure consequences, realising conditions 
of thought and life widely different from their own, 
estimating political measures according to their true 
proportionate value, and weighing nicely balanced 
arguments in a judicial spirit. 

The confusion becomes still greater when Parliaments 
divide into a number of small independent groups, each 
of them subordinating general political interests to the 
furtherance of some particular interests and opinions, 
and when the art of parliamentary government consists 
mainly of skill in combining these heterogeneous frac- 
tions in a single division. The first condition of good 
legislation on any particular question, as of most other 
good work, is that it should be single-minded — that it 
should represent the application of the best available 
faculty to a special purpose. There i^ scarcely a con- 
tested question determined in Parliament in which 
motives wholly different from the ostensible ones, and 
wholly unconnected with the immediate issue, do not 
influence many votes. It is also rather the rule than 
the exception that a general election produces a change 
of Government, and the defeated minority of one Par- 
liament becomes the majority in the next. 



CH. IT. GOVERNMENT BY ONE CHAMBER 363 

There is^, certainly, no proposition in politics more 
indubitable than that the attempt to govern a great, 
heterogeneous empire simply by such an assembly must 
ultimately prove disastrous, and the necessity of a se- 
cond Chamber, to exercise a controlling, modifying, 
retarding, and steadying influence has acquired almost 
the position of an axiom. Of all the many parlia- 
mentary constitutions now existing in the world, 
Greece, Mexico, and Servia are, I believe, the only 
ones in which independent and sovereign nations have 
adopted the system of a single Chamber, and, among 
these, Servia is only a partial exception. According 
to the Constitution of this little country, legislation 
is, in ordinary times, conducted by the king and a sin- 
gle national assembly, in which one out of every four 
members must be nominated by the king, and which 
exercises strictly limited and defined powers ; but the 
sovereign has a right of convoking when he pleases a 
second and much larger assembly, which alone is com- 
petent to deal with grave questions affecting the Con- 
stitution and the territory of the State. ^ Norway, 
being united with Sweden, is not an absolutely inde- 
pendent country, but it is one of the countries where 
legislative power is virtually in the hands of a single 
Chamber. The Storthing is a single Chamber, elected 
at a single election, but, when it meets, it elects out of 
its own body a second Chamber, consisting of a fourth 
part of its members. The extreme concentration of 
power resulting from this system is one of the great 
causes of the dangerous tension that exists in the rela- 
tions of Sweden and Norway. 

' Demombrynes's Les Consti- pire, and a few small Powers 

tutions Europeennes^ i. 715-24. holding a completely subordi- 

I do not include the Grand nate position in the German 

Ducliy of Finland, tlie Provin- system, in Avhich single Cham- 

cial Diets in the Austrian Em- bers exist. 



364 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv. 

The experience of the past abundantly corroborates 
the views of those who dread government by a single 
Chamber. In the English Commonwealth such a sys- 
tem for a short time existed ; but the abolition of the 
House of Lords was soon followed by the expulsion of 
the Commons^ and when Cromwell resolved to restore 
some measure of parliamentary government^ he clear- 
ly saw that two Chambers were indispensable^ and 
he revived on another basis the House of Lords. In 
America, Franklin had strongly advocated a single 
Chamber ; and in the American Confederation, which 
was formally adopted by the thirteen States in 1781, 
and which represented the United States in the first 
years of their independent existence, the Congress con- 
sisted of only one branch. It was invested with very 
small powers, and was almost as completely over- 
shadowed by the State rights of its constituents as the 
Cromwellian House of Commons had been by the mili- 
tary power of the Commonwealth. But the very first 
article of the American Constitution, which was framed 
in 1787, divided the Congress into a Senate and a 
House of Kepresentatives. In all the separate States 
the bicameral system exists, and it also exists in all the 
British colonies which have self-governing powers. In 
France, Turgot and Sieyes advocated a single Chamber, 
and in the French Constitution of 1791 all power was 
placed in the hands of such a body, the result being 
one of the most appalling tyrannies in the history of 
mankind. In 1848 the same experiment was once more 
tried, and it once more conducted France through an- 
archy to despotism. 

It is not necessary for my present purpose to enter 
into any disquisition about the origin and early evolu- 
tion of the House of Lords. For a long period of 
English histoi-y it was a small and a diminishing body, 



CH. IT. THE POWER OF THE LORDS 365 

and in the fifteenth century the spiritnal^ or life peers, 
considerably outnumbered the temporal, or hereditary 
ones. The Reformation had a capital influence on the 
constitution of the House. By removing the mitred 
abbots, it made the temporal peers a clear majority, 
while the vast distribution of monastic property among 
some of the great families added enormously to their 
influence. From this time the lay, or hereditary peer- 
age steadily increased. Only twenty - nine temporal 
peers had been summoned to the first Parliament of 
Henry VII., and fifty-one was the largest number sum- 
moned under Henry YIII. ; but 119 peers Avere sum- 
moned to the Parliament of 1640, and 139 to the 
Parliament of 1661.^ At the close of the seventeenth 
century the temporal peerage amounted to about 150 ; 
in the first Parliament of George III., to 174. In 
1642, the bishops were excluded by Act of Parliament 
from the House of Lords, which thus became, for the 
first time in its history, a purely hereditary body ; and 
in 1649 the House of Lords was abolished by the vote 
of the House of Commons. At the Restoration this 
vote being, of course, treated as null, the House re- 
vived, and by an Act of Parliament of 1661 the bishops 
were again introduced into its ranks. 

The Revolution, unlike the Commonwealth, had no 
injurious effect upon it. The change of dynasty was 
largely due to the action of the heads of a few great 
aristocratic families ; the House of Lords bore a very 
conspicuous part in regulating its terms ; and it is 
probably no exaggeration to say that the steady Whig 
preponderance in that House mainly secured the Revo- 
lution settlement during the long period of the dis- 
puted succession. It is true that, in the re-division of 



May's Const. Hist., i. 232-35. 



366 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

power which resulted from the decline of royal influ- 
ence at the Revolution, the larger share fell to the 
House of Commons, and by the time of Walpole that 
House, in its corporate capacity, was certainly the 
strongest body in the State ; but individual peers exer- 
cised an enormous influence over its composition. The 
system of small nomination boroughs was chiefly due 
to the fluctuations in wealth and population in the 
cornmunit}^, and to the practical annihilation of the old 
prerogative of the sovereign of revising the representa- 
tion by summoning new and rising places to send 
members to the Commons. Most of those seats passed 
under the patronage of peers, either on account of the 
vast territorial possessions which they had inherited, or 
by the frequent ennobling of great merchant-princes, 
who, by means of venal boroughs, had acquired politi- 
cal power, and who obtained their peerages as the re- 
ward of political services. 

The place which is occupied by the small boroughs 
in English history is a very great one. At the time 
v/hen the Revolution settlement was seriously disputed 
they gave the Whig party a steady preponderance of 
parliamentary power, thus securing it from those vio- 
lent fluctuations of opinion which, if the Legislature 
had been really popular, would have almost certainly 
proved fatal to the unsettled dynasty. They contri- 
buted, also, powerfully to the general harmony between 
the two Houses, and they enabled the House of Com- 
mons to grow steadily in influence, without exciting any 
hostility on the part of the Upper House. Perhaps 
the most dangerous moment in the history of the peer- 
age was in 1719, when the ministry of Sunderland and 
Stanhope endeavoured to make it a close body, by 
strictly limiting the number of the House, and almost 
wholly depriving the sovereign of the power of creating 



CH. IV. THE UN-ION WITH SCOTLAND 367 

new peers. Chiefly by the exertions of Walpole, this 
measure was defeated in the Commons, and no attempt 
was made to revive it ; and the presence in the Honse 
of Commons of large numbers of heirs to peerages, or 
of younger members of noble families, strengthened 
the harmony between the two Houses. 

The union with Scotland not only introduced sixteen 
peers into the House of Lords : it also introduced a 
new principle, as those peers were elected for a single 
Parliament by their fellow-peers. For a long period 
they were far from improving the constitution of the 
House, for this small alien section of an ancient but 
very poor aristocracy proved exceedingly subservient to 
Government control. The system of election also 
tended greatly to the misrepresentation of the peerage ; 
for it was by a simple majority, and the party which 
preponderated in the Scotch peerage returned, in con- 
sequence, the whole body of the representative peers. 
The position of the minority was at this time very 
anomalous ; for while the method of election made it 
impossible for them to enter the House of Lords as 
representative peers, they were at the same time inca- 
pacitated by law from sitting in the House of Com- 
mons, and the House of Lords, in 1711, passed a 
resolution declaring that, although the sovereign might 
confer an English peerage on a Scotch peer, he had 
not the right of introducing him into their House. 
The disability was, in some degree, evaded by the de- 
vice of conferring English peerages on the eldest sons 
of Scotch peers ; but it was accepted as law until 1782, 
when the question was referred to the judges, who 
unanimously pronounced the resolution of 1711 to have 
been unauthorised by the Act of Union, and it was 
accordingly rescinded by a vote of the House of Lords. 
From this time the right of conferring English peer- 



368 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

ages on the minority of Scotch peers who are excluded 
by their politics from the number of representative 
peers^ has been largely exercised. 

On the accession of George III. the position of the 
House of Lords was greatly changed. Hitherto the 
Whig party had predominated in its ranks, and the 
first object of the young King was to break down 
the power of a group of great Whig peers, who had 
accumulated masses of borough influence, and who 
had long dominated in the State. This is not the 
place to relate the long, and on the whole successful, 
struggle by which the King attained his ends ; but it 
must be noticed that during his whole reign peers 
drawn from the Tory party were created in large num- 
bers with the object of giving a new complexion to 
the House of Lords. The inducement to these crea- 
tions was, probably, considerably increased by the 
abolition of sinecure places, under Burke^s measure of 
economical reform, which deprived the minister of a 
large part of his former means of rewarding political 
services. 

The Irish Union introduced into the House of Lords 
a new body of twenty-eight representative peers. In 
Ireland, as in Scotland, the vicious system of election 
by simple majority, which inevitably gives one party 
in the peerage a monopoly, was adopted ; but no ques- 
tion was ever raised about the power of the Crown to 
introduce Irish peers into the House of Lords by the 
bestowal of English peerages ; and in other respects 
the Scotch precedent was not exactly followed. The 
Scotch peers were elected for one Pai'liament, but the 
Irish peers for life. The Scotch peers who were not 
in the House of Lords were absolutely excluded from 
sitting in the House of Commons ; but an Irish peer 
who was not a representative peer might sit in the 



CH. IV. THE SPIRITUAL PEERS 369 

Commons for an English, Scotch, or Welsh constitu- 
ency. The Scotch peerage was closed at the Union, 
the sovereign being deprived of all power of creating 
Scotch peerages. The Irish peerage was only limited 
at the Union, for the sovereign retained the power of 
creating one Irish peerage whenever three Irish peer- 
ages were extinguished — a useless jDower, which has in 
our own day been surrendered. 

Another important difference was that, the Scotch 
Church being Presbyterian, the Scotch Union left the 
spiritual peers unchanged, while the Irish Union in- 
troduced a new body of spiritual peers, sitting by a 
new principle of rotation. This slight addition of an 
archbishop and four bishops disappeared when the 
Irish Church was disestablished ; but it represents 
the only modern increase which has taken place in 
the number of the spiritual peers to counterbalance the 
great increase of the temporal ones. Several new Eng- 
lish bishoprics, it is true, have been in the present cen- 
tury created ; but the legislation that authorised them 
expressly provided that there should be no increase in 
the number of bishops in the House of Lords. ^ Two 
archbishops and the bishops of London, Durham, 
and Winchester invariably sit in the House ; but of 
the remaining bishops, only the twenty-one senior bi- 
shops sit in the House of Lords, and an unwritten 
conventionality greatly restricts their interference in 
purely secular politics. 

Few things, indeed, in English history are more 
significant than the change which has taken place in 
the political influence of the Cliurch. Great Church- 
men once continually held the highest offices in the 
Government. But no clergyman has taken part in an 

' See, e.g., 10 & 11 Vict., c. 108, s. 2. 
VOL. I. . 24 



370 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. iv. 

English Government since tlie reign of Queen Anne^ 
though in Ireland a succession of great governing pre- 
lates continued far into the eighteenth centur}^ The 
spiritual element in the House of Lords has become a 
small fraction in the House^, and the presence of that 
small element has come to be looked uj^on as an ano- 
maly. Yet the bishops sit in the House of Lords by 
an older title than any section of the lay peerage, with 
the possible exception of the earls, and for a consider- 
able period of English history they formed the ma- 
jority of the House. ^ They represent, in a certain 
measure, the principle of life peerages, to which mo- 
dern Liberal tendencies are steadily flowing ; for, al- 
though they sit in the House by an order of succession, 
it is a succession of office, and not a succession of 
lineage ; and the manner in which they are appointed 
furnishes a strong presumption that they possess a 
more than average capacity, a more than average 
knowledge of the condition of great sections of the 
English people, and, especially, a more than average 
share of that administrative ability which is so valuable 
in the government of nations. 

The strong Tory character that the House of Lords 
assumed in the reign of George III. has been in many 
ways a misfortune in English history, but it is far from 
certain that it was unpopular. The House of Lords 
was never at this period in as violent conflict with the 
popular sentiment as the House of Commons in the 
Wilkes case. The most memorable conflict between 
the two Houses in this reign took place when the 
House of Lords overthrew the coalition ministry, 
which commanded a great majority in the House of 



' See Freeman's essay on this subject in the fourth series of his 
Historical Essays. 



CH. IV. THE TORY PEERAGE 371 

Commons^ and supported Pitt in holding office for 
three months in opposition to that majority ; but the 
dissolution of 1784 decisively vindicated the policy of 
the Lords, and proved that on this question they most 
truly represented the sentiment of the nation. The 
strong hostility to reform which undoubtedly prevailed 
in the House of Lords in the closing years of the 
eighteenth century and in the early decades of the 
nineteenth century represented with, probably, unex- 
aggerated fidelity the reaction of opinion which had 
passed over England in consequence of the horrors 
and calamities of the French Revolution, and its anti- 
Catholic sentiment was fully shared by the English 
people. The total defeat, at the election of 1807, of 
the party which advocated a policy of most moderate 
Catholic concession is a decisive proof. It Avas not, 
indeed, until 1821 that any considerable divergence on 
this question was shown between the two Houses. It 
will usually, I think, be found that the House of 
Lords at this time, in the actions which later periods 
have most condemned, represented a prejudice which 
was predominant in the country, though it often re- 
presented it in a slightly exaggerated form, and with 
a somewhat greater persistence than the House of 
Commons. The presence of a spiritual element did 
not prevent the Upper House being behind the House 
of Commons in the great work of diminishing, and at 
last abolishing, the horrors of the slave trade ; and the 
authority of some great lawyers who sat in the House 
of Lords was the direct cause of its opposition to some 
of the most necessary legal reforms, and especially to 
the mitigation of the atrocities of the criminal code. 

There are, however, two facts which must always 
be borne in mind in comparing the House of Lords in 
the corrupt and unreforming period between the out- 



372 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

break of the great French war and tlie Reform Bill of 
1832 with the House of Lords in our own day. What- 
ever may be said in the present day of the class preju- 
dices, the class apathy, or even the class interests, of 
its members, no candid man will deny that it is an 
eminently independent body, absolutely free from all 
taint or suspicion of corruption, and there is, probably, 
no legislative body in the world in which motives of 
mere personal interest bear a smaller share. In the 
early period of the century, on the contrary, a great 
and dominating section of the peerage consisted of 
men who were directly bound to the Crown by places 
or pensions ; while the indirect advantages of the peer- 
age, in the distribution of the vast patronage in Church 
and State, were so great that the whole body was bound 
to the existing system of government by personal and 
selfish motives of the strongest kind. ' The far greater 
part of the peers, ^ wrote Queen Caroline to George 
IV. in 1820, ' hold, by themselves and their families, 
offices, pensions, and emoluments solely at the will 
and pleasure of your Majesty. There are more than 
four-fifths of the peers in this situation.^ Wilberforce 
mentioned, in 1811, that more than half the House of 
Lords ^had been created or gifted with their titles' 
since 1780, and the special object of these creations 
had been to make the House completely subservient to 
the Crown and to the Executive.^ 

The other consideration is the borough patronage, 
to which I have already referred. It identified the 
interests of the peerage in the closest degree with op- 
position to reform. It was not only an interest of 
power and of family, but also an interest of property, 
for these boroughs were notoriously bought and sold. 

' AValpole's History of England^ i. 150. 



CH. IV. THE PEERAGE BEFORE 1832 373 

Before Curweii's Act, which was passed in 1809, im- 
posing penalties on such sales, they were practised with 
scarcely any concealment, and after that Act they still 
continued. The analysis of the representation given 
in Oldfield's ' Representative History/ which was pub- 
lished in 1816, shows that, out of the 513 members 
who then represented England and Wales, no less than 
218 were returned by the influence or nomination of 
eighty-seven peers. Scotland was represented by forty- 
five members, of whom thirty-one were returned by 
twenty-one peers. Ireland was represented by 100 
members, of Avhom fifty-one were returned by thirty- 
six peers. Six peers returned no less than forty-five 
members to the House of Commons.'^ 

It is sufficiently obvious from these facts that, while 
the forms of the Constitution have remained sub- 
stantially unchanged, its character and working have 
been essentially and fundamentally altered by the Re- 
form Bill of 1832, and no one can wonder that the 
House of Lords should have resisted that Reform Bill 
with a persistence which nothing short of imminent 
danger of a revolution and the threat of a great im- 
mediate creation of peers could overcome. It is, rather, 
w^onderful that a peerage exercising such power should 
have been, on the whole, so steadily in touch with the 
popular feeling ; that English legislation should have 
been so free from the privileges of taxation and many 
kindred abuses in favour of the aristocracy, which 
existed in most Continental countries ; that the sys- 
tem of nomination boroughs should have been so 
largely employed in bringing poor men of genius and 
promise into the House of Commons ; that so large a 
number of members of the Upper House should have 



May, i. 282-306 ; Oldfield, vi. 285-300. 



374 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

been in the van of every great movement of reform. 
Even in the conflict of 1832 this characteristic was 
clearly shown. Some of the oldest and greatest aristo- 
cratic families in the kingdom led the popular cause. 
It was noticed that, of the peers created before 1790, 108 
voted in favour of the Bill, and only four against it,' 
while, until the very last stage of the struggle, no class 
of members in the House of Lords were more strenu- 
ously opposed to tlie Bill than the bishops. 

Since this great measure the position of the House of 
Lords in the Constitution has fundamentally altered. 
It no longer claims a co-ordinate power with the House 
of Commons in legislation : it exercises a secondary 
position in the Constitution. But if it has sometimes 
retarded measures that were both useful and urgent, it 
also discharges functions of great and of increasing 
utility. It exercises a suspensory veto, delaying mea- 
sures which have acquired only an uncertain, transitory, 
or capricious majority, until they have become clearly 
the deliberate desire of the constituencies. In the sys- 
tem of party government it constantly happens that 
the popularity of a statesman, or the ascendency of a 
party, or the combination at an election of many dis- 
tinct interests or motives acting simultaneously on 
many different classes of electors, brings into power a 
Government many of whose measures have never re- 
ceived the real sanction of the electors. Sometimes 
lines of policy of great importance are first started in 
the course of a session. Often measures of great im- 
portance are brought forward in Parliament which 
at the election had been entirely subsidiary with the 
electors, or with great sections of them, or which had 
come to them with the disadvantage of novelty, and 



Molesworth's History^ i. 203. 



CH. IV. FUNCTIONS OP THE LORDS 375 

had never been thoroughly understood or thoroughly 
canvassed. Public opinion in England rarely occupies 
itself seriously with more than one great question at a 
time^ and those deliberate and widespread convictions, 
on which alone a national policy can be firmly and 
safely based, are only arrived at after a long period of 
discussion. Nothing can be more frequent than for 
a measure to obtain a majority in the House of Com- 
mons which has never been either approved of or 
considered by the bulk of the electors by whom that 
majority was returned. In all such cases it is a matter 
of vita] importance that there should be a delaying 
power, capable of obstructing measures till they have 
been distinctly sanctioned by the electorate, till they 
have come to represent the reasoned and deliberate 
opinion of the constituencies. 

It is extremely important, too, that something of a 
judicial element should be infused into politics. In 
policies that are closely connected with party conflicts, 
the question of party interest will always dominate in 
the House of Commons over the question of intrinsic 
merits. A bad measure will often be carried, though 
it may be known to be bad, when the only alternative 
is the displacement of a ministry supported by a ma- 
jority. Under these circumstances, the existence of 
a revising Chamber which is so constituted that it can 
reject a measure without overthrowing a ministry, and 
which is not dependent on the many chances of a 
popular election, is one of the best guarantees of sound 
legislation. 

It is, also, one of the greatest and most distinctive 
excellences of British legislation that it is in general 
framed, not on the system of giving a decisive victory 
to one set of interests, and obtaining perfect symmetry 
or logical coherence, but with a view of satisfying, as 



376 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

far as possible, many different and conflicting interests, 
classes, and opinions. The permanence and efficacy 
of legislation, according to English notions, depends 
essentially on its success in obtaining the widest mea- 
sure of assent or acquiescence, and provoking the 
smallest amount of friction and opposition. In carry- 
ing out this policy the action of the House of Lords 
has been of capital importance. Very frequently it re- 
presents esj^ecially the minority which is overpowered 
in the other House. The will of the majority in the 
stronger Chamber ultimately prevails, but scarcely a 
great contentious measure passes into the Statute Book 
without compromises, modifications, or amendments 
designed to disarm the opposition, or to satisfy the 
wishes of minorities, or to soften the harsher features 
of inevitable transitions. The mere consciousness that 
there is another and a revising assembly, whose assent 
is indispensable to legislation, has a moderating influ- 
ence on majorities and ministries which it is difficult 
to overvalue. The tyranny of majorities is, of all forms 
of tyranny, that which, in the conditions of modern 
life, is most to be feared, and against which it should 
be the chief object of a wise statesman to provide. 

It is an easy and frequent device of Radical writers 
to assail the House of Lords by enumerating the mea- 
sures of incontestable value which it had for a time 
rejected or delayed. That it has in its long history 
committed many faults no candid man will deny, 
though it is by no means equally clear that they have 
greatly exceeded those which have been committed by 
the other House. In my own opinion the side of its 
policy which, in the present century, has been the 
worst is that relating to religious disqualifications, and 
the fact is the more remarkable because, in the genera- 
tion that followed the Revolution, the House of Lords 



CH. iv. CHARACTER OF ENGLISH LEGISLATION 377 

was incontestably more liberal than the House of Com- 
mons m all questions relating to Nonconformists. In 
more modern times this has not been the case, and the 
doctrine that the existence of an Established Church 
implied that State funds should be devoted only to one 
form of religion, and tliat the great fields of State 
power, education, influence, and employment should 
be guarded by religious qualifications against the ad- 
herents of other faiths, prevailed in the House of Lords 
long after it had broken down in the Commons. It is 
a doctrine which has played a great, and, as I believe, 
most mischievous, part in English history. In the 
present century it has probably found its most power- 
ful defence in the early writings and speeches of Mr. 
Gladstone. 

At the same time, many things may be alleged which 
will at least mitigate the blame that, on such grounds, 
may be attached to the House of Lords. An assembly 
which is essentially representative of property and 
tradition, whose chief duty is much less to initiate 
legislation than to prevent that which is hasty and 
unwise, and which fulfils rather the function of a 
brake or of a drag than of a propelling force, will in- 
evitably be slower than the other House to adopt con- 
stitutional or organic changes. The legislative reforms 
which the House of Lords is so much blamed for hav- 
ing rejected all became law with its consent ; and, on 
the whole, England need not fear comparison with any 
other country in the enlightened character of her legis- 
lation. If a few countries have moved more rapidly, 
very few have moved so surely, and the permanence of 
her reforms and the tranquillity with which they were 
effected are largely due to the existence of a Chamber 
which delayed them till they lind been thorouglily 
sifted and incontestably sanctioned by the nation, and 



378 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

wliicli disarmed opposition by introducing compromises 
and amendments to meet the wants of discontented 
minorities. Of the measures the House of Lords is 
accused of mutilating or delaying, many had been re- 
peatedly rejected by the House of Commons itself, or 
had never been brought clearly and directly before the 
constituencies ; or had been supported in the Lower 
House by small, doubtful, and diminishing majorities ; 
or had excited little more than an academic interest, 
touching no real feeling throughout the nation. It 
has seldom, if ever, rejected measures on which the 
will of the people had been decisively and persistently 
expressed. 

The moment of its greatest unpopularity was, pro- 
bably, that of the Reform Bill of 1832, and it was the 
firm persuasion of the Radical wing of the triumphant 
party that one early and inevitable consequence of the 
extended suffrage would be the destruction, or at least 
the total transformation, of the House of Lords. The 
Whig ministers, it is true, gave no countenance to 
these attacks, but the agitation against the Lords was 
actively maintained by O'Connell and by a considerable 
body of English Radicals. One attempt was made to 
deprive it of its veto, and another to expel the bishops 
from its walls ; and the incompatibility of an heredi- 
tary legislative body with a democratic Parliament was 
continually affirmed in language much like that which 
we so abundantly heard before the election of 1895. 
The result of this agitation is very instructive. On 
some of the questions on which the Houses differed 
the House of Lords yielded, insisting only on minor 
compromises. On the important question of the ap- 
propriation of Irish Church funds to secular purposes 
it succeeded in carrying its point. The agitation for 
an organic change in the Constitution was soon found 



CH. IV. HEREDITARY LEGISLATORS 379 

to excite more alarm than approbation in the country. 
The current of opinion turned strongly against the agi- 
tators, and against the Government which those agita- 
tors supported. In less than ten years the revolution 
of opinion was complete, and the election of May 1841 
brought a Conservative minister into power at the head 
of an overwhelming majority. 

We may next consider the advantages and disadvan- 
tages of the hereditary principle in the Upper House. 
It was a saying of Franklin that there is no more rea- 
son in hereditary legislators than there would be in 
hereditary professors of mathematics. In England, 
however, there is no question of placing the making 
of laws in the hands of an hereditary class. All that 
the Constitution provides is, that the members of this 
class should have a fixed place, in concurrence with 
others, in accomplishing the task. It is absurd to ex- 
pect that the eldest son of a single family shall always 
display exceptional, or even average, capacity, and this 
is one of the main arguments against hereditary de- 
spotic monarchy, which places in the hands of one 
man, selected on the principle of strict heredity, one 
of the most arduous and responsible tasks which a 
human being can undertake. It is not, however, ab- 
surd to expect that more than five hundred families, 
thrown into public life for the most part at a very 
early age, animated by all its traditions and ambitions, 
and placed under circumstances exceedingly favourable 
to the development of political talent, should produce 
a large amount of governing faculty. The qualities 
required for successful political life are not, like poetry 
or the higher forms of philosophy, qualities that are of 
a very rare and exceptional order. They are, for the 
most part, qualities of judgment, industry, tact, know- 
ledge of men and of affairs, which can be attained to a 



380 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

high degree of perfection by men of no very extraordi- 
nary intellectual powers. Outside the circle of the 
leisured classes, most men only rise to great positions 
in political life at a mature age, and after a long strug- 
gle in other spheres. Their minds have already taken 
their definite ply. Their best thoughts and efforts 
have, during many years, been devoted to wholly dif- 
ferent pursuits. When they come into the House of 
Commons, they have, in many departments, still to 
learn the rudiments of their art. Even if they are men 
of real and solid attainments, they have commonly lost 
their flexibility, and defects of manner or of tact which 
might be easily corrected in youth, but which become 
indelible in mature life, often obstruct a political career 
far more seriously than much graver causes. Everyone 
who has come in close contact with parliamentary life 
knows how seriously the popularity and influence of 
members of very real attainments have been impaired 
by the professorial manner, or the legal manner, or 
the purely academic habit of mind, or the egotism 
and false sentiment that often accompany a self-made 
man ; or the incapacity for compromise, for avoiding 
friction, for distinguishing different degrees of im- 
portance and seriousness, which characterises a man 
who has not had the education of a man of the world. 
A man, too, who is not marked out in any way by his 
position for parliamentary distinction is more tempted 
than those of another class to make sacrifices of prin- 
ciple and character to Avin the prize. He is likely to 
be more absolutely dependent on party organisations, 
more governed by the desire for office, or title or social 
distinction. 

The position of a young man, on the other hand, 
who has the fortune to belong to one of the great go- 
verning families is very different. He usually obtains 



GH. IV. SOCIAL ADVANTAGES IN POLITICS 381 

the best education the country can give him, and he 
possesses the inestimable advantage of coming from an 
early age into close, constant, unconstrained intercourse 
with men who are actively engaged in the government 
of the country. In many great families the whole in- 
tellectual atmosphere is political. Political topics are 
those which are most constantly discussed around him, 
and the pride and greatness of the family lie mainly in 
the political distinction which has been achieved by its 
members in the past, and the political influence and 
connections they possess in the present. Examples 
and incentives are thus formed, which seldom fail to 
act powerfully on a young man of talent and ambition, 
and the path that is before him is clearly marked out. 
He travels, and knows something of foreign languages, 
and although his knowledge of the Continent is, usu- 
ally, exceedingly superficial, it is above the average 
that is attained in trade or in the professions ; while 
the social element in which he moves requires from 
him some tincture of general reading. He has, usu- 
ally, the immense advantage of entering the House of 
Commons when he is still a young man, and he very 
probably soon fills one of the subordinate offices. As 
an actual or expectant landlord ; as a magistrate ; as 
the political leader of his district ; as the initiator or 
president of many local institutions or movements, he 
obtains an early aptitude for business, an intimate 
knowledge of the characters and circumstances of 
great sections of the people, which will be more use- 
ful to him than any lesson that he can learn from 
books. The manners of a gentleman come to him al- 
most as a birthright, and no good judge will fail to 
recognise their importance in political life. Self-con- 
fidence unalloyed by arrogance or egotism ; the light 
touch, the instinctive tact which lessens friction and 



382 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

avoids points of difference ; the spirit of compromise 
and conciliation, which is so useful in the management 
of men and in the conduct of affairs, are the natural 
products of the atmosphere in which he was born. 
Having a great independent position, he is less acces- 
sible than poorer men to the sordid motives that play 
so large a part in public life ; while the standard of 
honour of his class, though it by no means covers the 
whole field of morals, at least guards him against that 
large department of bad acts which can be designated 
as ungentlemanly. 

The reader will, of course, understand that this de- 
scription has only a very general application. There 
are many cases in which great names and positions are 
associated only with lives of mischievous self-indul- 
gence or scandalous vice. There are circles where 
luxury is carried to such a pitch that men almost come 
to resemble that strange species of ant which is so de- 
pendent on the ministrations of its slave ants that it 
would starve to death if these were not present to feed 
it. The enormous and elaborate waste of time, the 
colossal luxury of ostentation, the endless routine of 
dressing and gossip and frivolous amusements that 
prevail in some great country houses, form an atmo- 
sphere which is well fitted to kill all earnestness of 
purpose and conviction. The pleasures of life are 
made its business. The slaughter of countless beasts 
and birds is treated as if it were a main object of ex- 
istence. Life is looked down upon as from an opera- 
box, till all sense of its seriousness seems to vanish, 
and the conflicts of parties are followed with a merely 
sporting interest, much like that which is centred on 
the rival horses at l^ewmarket or Ascot. 

It is no less true that there are numerous cases in 
which men who were born in spheres far removed from 



CH. IV. THE CLASS AVERAGE 383 

those of the governing families have exhibited in high 
perfection all the best qualities which the aristocratic 
system is calculated to foster. But we are dealing 
here with class averages, and few persons, I think, will 
dispute the high average of capacity for government 
which the circumstances of English aristocratic life 
tend to produce. An English aristocracy, as has been 
often observed, is essentially different from those fo- 
reign aristocracies which constitute a separate caste. 
Its members have always largely intermarried with com- 
moners. Their children, except the eldest, descend 
speedily into the ranks of commoners ; they are usually 
obliged to make their own positions by their own ef- 
forts, and, since the great reforms that have taken 
place in the bestowal of patronage, without unfair ad- 
vantages ; and there is no part of the British Empire 
in which members of great British families may not be 
found sharing alike the most arduous labours and the 
most hard-won prizes. 

It is, unfortunately, a truth only too abundantly at- 
tested that, as a general rule, few greater misfortunes 
can befall a young man than to inherit at an early age 
such a fortune as places at his feet an ample range of 
enjoyments without the necessity of any kind of labour. 
Strong intellectual tastes and powers, and unusual 
force of character, will make their way through any 
circumstances, but the common lot of man is to be 
commonplace — though there are few imputations which 
most men more bitterly resent — and it is not natural 
for a young man of small talent and very ordinary cha- 
racter to devote himself to steady labour when no 
necessity urges him, and when all the means of self- 
indulgence are at his disposal. On the Continent such 
young men commonly gravitate to the towns, where 
a life of pleasure soon passes into a life of vice. In 



384 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

England, the passion for field sports has at least the 
advantage of supplying a large sphere of nnintellectual 
and absorbing amusement which is healthy, manly, 
and innocent ; but, as I have already observed, the 
special preservative in England of the character of 
such men lies in a social condition which assigns to a 
wealthy class a large circle of necessary duties, and 
makes the gratuitous discharge of public functions the 
appanage and sign of dignity. 

Another consideration must be mentioned, of a dif- 
ferent and more delicate kind. There can be little 
doubt that the conditions most favourable for a high 
average of morality are to be found in the temperate 
zones of life, removed from the ignorance, the degra- 
ding associations, and the keen temptations of want, 
and also from the luxurious, enervating, self-indulgent 
habits of superabundant wealth. The one great moral 
advantage which sj^ecially belongs to the latter sphere 
is the facility of early marriage which an assured com- 
petence gives, and which provides in a very critical 
period of life a strong regulating influence of character. 
It will, I think, be found that these marriages are 
more general among rich men connected with a landed 
aristocracy than among those whose fortunes have been 
rapidly made by commerce or speculation. Questions 
of succession hold a larger place in the lives of the 
former class. An established position and the posses- 
sion of a great historic house bring duties of hospitality 
which make marriage almost a necessity, and which 
are rarely fully learned except by early practice ; and 
the women who give the tone and the attraction to Eng- 
lish aristocratic society seldom fail, even in the most 
frivolous and pleasure-loving circles, to insist on a de- 
gree of decorum in the relation of the sexes which is not 
always found in corresponding societies in other lands. 



CH. IV. ARISTOCRATIC MARRIAGES AND TASTES 385 

The importance of this question of marriage is very- 
great, and modern science has thrown much light on 
its far-reaching consequences. Marriages confined to a 
restricted caste, such as are usual in royal families and, 
in a less degree, in some foreign aristocracies, seldom 
fail to result in physical, mental, or moral debility. 
An aristocracy which marries mainly and habitually 
for wealth is likely to be a dwindling body. The great 
heiress who concentrates in her own person the for- 
tunes of a family is commonly such because she comes 
from a family in which children are unusually few, or 
in which deaths are unusually numerous, and the intro- 
duction of such women into a family has, therefore, a 
natural tendency to lower the average of its produc- 
tivity.^ But where marriages are not unduly limited 
by conventional restraints, and where wealth is not 
too exclusively sought, the great advantage of choice 
which an illustrious position gives in what is called, 
not quite unjustly, the ' matrimonial market,^ has an 
undoubted tendency to improve and invigorate a race, 
by grafting into its stock an unusual proportion of 
more than common physical and mental endowments. 
Country lives and tastes, and the general character of 
their marriages, have thus combined to give the upper 
classes in England a high physical average, which has 
contributed in no small degree to their influence in the 
world. Whatever else may be said of them, no one at 
least can accuse them of being an effete and debilitated 
class. The energy with which they throw themselves 
into their sports and travels and political contests, the 
mark they have made in so many fields, the prominent 
part they have taken in the initiation of so many enter- 
prises, the skill, industry, and success with which they 



' See Mr. Galton's Hereditary Genius^ pp. 131-40. 
VOL. I. 25 



386 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv. 

have managed great properties and guided local affairs, 
are sufficiently evident. 

There is no better sign of the vitality of a class than 
its flexibility of adaptation ; and in this respect the 
upjoer classes in England have been, in the present 
century, abundantly proved. When the great demo- 
cratic movement deprived them of a monopoly or a 
preference in vast fields of administration and patron- 
age, they did not shrink from public life, but at once 
accepted the new conditions, flung themselves boldly 
and skilfully into all the competitions of English life, 
and retrieved by talent and personal popularity a great 
part of the ascendency of which they had been de- 
prived by lav^^ A still graver trial followed when 
agricultural depression fell with terrible effect on the 
main sources of their income. Eew things are more 
striking in modern English history than the courage 
and high spirit with which the landed gentry of Eng- 
land, both of the higher and lower grades, have, on the 
whole, met the trial, discarding conventional rules 
and restraints which limited their means of acquiring 
fortune, bearing with uncomplaining fortitude great 
changes of life and habits, throwing themselves boldly 
into a multitude of new industrial enterprises, send- 
ing their children to seek a livelihood in the counting- 
houses of merchants, the ranches of Mexico, or the 
diamond-fields of Africa. 

That very shrewd and competent observer. Arch- 
bishop Magee, once remarked that nothing struck him 
more in the House of Lords than the large amount of 
curious special knowledge possessed by its members. 
When the most out-of-the-way subject was started there 
seemed always, he said, some obscure peer on the back 
benches who had made this subject a study, and knew 
all about it. In the fields of literature, philosophy, 



CH. IV. USES OF AN ARISTOCRACY 387 

and science, the achievements of members of that 
House have been very considerable ; and in numerous 
cases, where no original work is produced, an un- 
usually high level of scholarship and research has 
been attained. But it is naturally in political life that 
the superior qualities of the class have been most dis- 
played. No one who is well acquainted with English 
history can fail to be struck with the very large number 
of its members who have fully held their own in the 
conflicts of the House of Commons, and who have dis- 
charged great public duties with an industry and a 
skill that have been universally recognised. A few of 
these statesmen have been men who would have risen 
from almost any rank of life to power and influence. 
The majority have been men of good, but not ex- 
traordinary, ability who, if they had been born in hum- 
bler spheres, would probably have led creditable and 
successful lives, but have been little heard of, but who, 
being placed by their positions on the threshold of 
public life, and enabled from an early age, and with 
many advantages, to devote themselves to it, have at- 
tained a proficiency in statesmanship that has been of 
great service to their country. Among the Prime 
Ministers since the Eeform Bill of 1832 there have 
been several who represent names and families that have 
been for centuries illustrious in English history ; and, 
in our own generation, one of the most brilliant of 
these Prime Ministers has been able, without incurring 
the smallest imputation of nepotism, to appoint his 
eldest son, and another of them to appoint his nephew, 
to a foremost place in his Administration. 

The value of this state of things to the nation at 
large is very great. There are countries where a pub- 
lic man is nothing before he comes to office, and no- 
thing when he quits office, and almost omnipotent while 



388 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY en. iv. 

he holds office, and where this is the case public affairs 
seldom fail to be corruptly, selfishly, and recklessly 
administered. It is of no small importance that a na- 
tion should possess a class of public men, of undoubted 
competence and experience, who have a large stake in 
the prosperity of the country, who possess a great posi- 
tion independent of politics, who represent very emi- 
nently the traditions and the continuity of political 
life, and who, whatever may be their faults, can at least 
be trusted to administer affairs with a complete personal 
integrity and honour. In the fields of diplomacy, and 
in those great administrative posts which are so nume- 
rous in an extended empire, high rank, and the manners 
that commonly accompany it, are especially valuable, 
and their weight is not the least powerfully felt in deal- 
ing with democracies. The monarchy and the aristo- 
cracy, which some writers regard as merely ornamental 
portions of the constitution, contribute in a degree 
whicli is not often realised to its greatness and its co- 
hesion. It is not the British House of Commons, but 
the British Throne, that is the centre of the loyalty 
and affection of the Colonies. The disruption of 
America from the British Empire was largely due to 
the encroachments of Parliament on the ancient pre- 
rogative of the Crown ; and no small part of the suc- 
cess of English colonial government is due to the class 
of men who have been appointed governors. They 
have represented in high perfection the type of aristo- 
cratic statesman which English institutions produce, 
and they have displayed a higher average of comj^e- 
tence and character than either hereditary sovereigns 
or elected presidents. An aristocratic Government 
mainly built up this great Empire in the past. The 
aristocratic element within it undoubtedly contributes 
to its successful administration in the present. Nor is 



CH. IV. ITS REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER 389 

it a matter of indifference that a large proportion of tlie 
men who have held high office in India and the Colo- 
nies return after their period of office to the House of 
Lords^ bringing to it a knowledge of Indian and colo- 
nial affairs that is seldom equalled in the House of 
Commons. 

So far I have spoken chiefly of the ancient heredi- 
tary element in the House of Lords, but it must not be 
forgotten that this element is constantly recruited from 
without. In addition to the members of the episcopal 
bench, great landlords, great merchants and manufac- 
turers, great lawyers (in superabundant measure), 
great soldiers, sailors, and administrators, are con- 
stantly pouring into the House of Lords ; and it is also 
the resource of many experienced statesmen who for 
some cause are excluded from a Cabinet or a House of 
Commons, or who from advancing years, or failing 
health, or quiet tastes, find the strain of the House of 
Commons excessive or distasteful. The system of pro- 
motion is far from perfect, and some of its defects will 
be hereafter considered ; but it at least gives the House 
of Lords a diversified and representative character. To 
those who can look beyond names and forms to the sub- 
stance of things, it is sufficiently evident that a body 
which is not elective may be eminently representative, 
reflecting and maintaining with great fidelity the inter- 
ests, characters, wishes, and opinions of many different 
classes in the community. It is equally certain that a 
body which is elected on the widest popular suffrage 
may be so largely returned by a single class, or by igno- 
rant men duped by artful men, that it may totally fail 
to represent in their true proportion and degree the 
genuine opinions and the various interests of its con- 
stituents. 

Judging by this test, the House of Lords will, I 



390 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

tliink^ rank very high. Man for man^ it is qnite possi- 
ble that it rejoresents more ability and knowledge than 
the House of Commons, and its members are certainly 
able to discuss public affairs in a more single-minded 
and disinterested spirit. In all questions of law ; in 
all the vast range of subjects connected with county 
government, agricultural interests, and the state of the 
agricultural poor ; in questions connected with the 
Church and the army ; and it may, I think, be added, 
with foreign j^olic}^, and often with Indian and colonial 
policy, its suj^eriority of knowledge is very marked. It 
contains important representatives of the great manu- 
facturing and commercial interests, some of the greatest 
owners of town propert}^, some of the most experienced 
administrators of distant portions of the Empire. Ap- 
pointments to the episcopacy are now made in a much 
more rational fashion than in the days of what were 
called the ' Greek Play Bishops," when this dignity was 
chiefly reserved for men who had attained distinction 
in classical scholarship. Probably the majority of 
modern bishops have been rectors of large parishes in 
town or country ; have come into close touch with the 
lives of the poorer classes in the community ; have 
spent many years in disinterested labour for their bene- 
fit, and have had rare opportunities of understanding 
their real wants, characters, tendencies, difficulties, and 
temptations. As the reader Avill have gathered, I do 
not greatly admire the action of the bishops in the 
House of Lords on purely ecclesiastical questions, and 
especially on questions affecting religious liberty. But, 
on large classes of questions relating to the poor, it is 
difficult to overrate the indirect value a legislative body 
derives from the presence of men who possess the kind 
of knowledge and the kind of ability wdiich are to be 
found in a su^^erior 2:>arish clergyman. Philanthropists 



CH. IV. ITS REPRESENTATIVE CHARACTER 391 

who have devoted themselves to social questions with 
eminent skill and generosity have been found within 
the House of Lords. It always includes a large amount 
of matured and experienced statesmanship, and a great 
majority of those who take an active part in its pro- 
ceedings have been at least members of the House of 
Commons. 

Such an assembly may have serious defects, and it is 
certainly not fitted in the nineteenth century to take the 
leading place in the Constitution ; but no candid man 
will deny that it is largely representative, and that it 
includes in a rare degree the qualities and the elements 
that are most needed in revising and perfecting legisla- 
tion. Its members are the natural heads of the gentry, 
and especially of the landed gentry, and it represents 
their sentiments and is supported by their strength. 
Wise statesmanship will always seek to strengthen go- 
vernment by connecting it with the chief elements of 
independent influence, power, and popularity that exist 
throughout the nation. ^N'o one who has any real 
knowledge of the English people will doubt the high 
place the aristocracy holds among these elements. Ev- 
ery electioneering agent knows that the son of a great 
peer is one of the best parliamentary candidates he can 
run. More than 190 members of the present House of 
Lords liave been previously elected to the House of 
Commons, and a great proportion of them have passed 
directly from the Lower into the Upper House. ^ In 
choosing directors for companies, presidents for chari- 
ties, chairmen for public meetings, initiators for almost 



1 In a speech by Mr. Curzon, of Commons. In the Constitu- 

in a debate on the House of iional Year-Book for 1803 tlie 

Lords (March 9, 1888), it is number at that time is said (p. 

stated that there were then 19-t 60) to be 192. 
peers who had sat in the House 



392 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

every kind of social^ industrial, political, or philanthro- 
pic movement, the English people naturally turn to 
this quarter. The adulation of rank in great bodies of 
men is often irrational, even to absurdity, and is con- 
nected with a vein of vulgarity that runs deeply through 
English nature. But, whatever may be thought of it, 
it at least shows that the position assigned to the House 
of Lords in the Constitution is not a mere arbitrary, or 
exotic, or archaic thing, but represents a real and living 
force of opinion and affection. Political leaders may 
talk the language of pure democracy from the platform, 
but no Cabinet, however Eadical, has ever sat in Eng- 
land which did not consist largely of peers and of men 
who were connected with peers, while the great ma- 
jority of the other members have been, usually, posses- 
sors of considerable independent fortunes. 

^or is the popular English sentiment about rank in 
all respects vulgar or irrational. In a vast crowded 
population established position does something to raise 
a man into the clear light of day ; it forms some gua- 
rantee of independence and of integrity ; and something, 
at least, of the prevailing feeling is due to a well- 
founded conviction that the British aristocracy have 
been distinguished as a class for their high standard, 
both of j)ersonal honour and of public duty. It is idle 
to su|)230se that great masses will ever judge men mainly 
by their intellectual or moral qualities. Other and 
lower measures will inevitably prevail ; and, as I have 
elsewhere said, ' When the worship of rank and the 
worship of wealth are in competition, it may at least 
be said that the existence of two idols diminishes by 
dividing the force of each superstition, and that the 
latter evil is an increasing one, while the former is 
never again likely to be a danger.^ In England, the 
aristocratic classes have no longer the complete pre- 



CH. IV. INCREASING LUXURY 393 

ponderance of wealth they once possessed, and the 
great dej^ression of land has contributed materially to 
alter their position ; but they are still a very wealthy 
class, and some of their members are among the richest 
miCn in the world. But great wealth in their hands is 
at least not mere plutocracy. It is connected with, 
and tempered by, another order of ideas. It is associ- 
ated with an assured social position, with an hereditary 
standard of honour, with great responsibilities, with a 
large circle of administrative duties. If aristocracy 
were to cease to be a power in England, its social in- 
fluence would chiefly pass to mere wealth, and its po- 
litical influence would largely pass to the managers of 
party organisations, and to demagogues. 

The evils that spring from mere plutocracy are great, 
and increasing. One of the most evident is the enor- 
mous growth of luxurious living. The evil does not, 
in my opinion, lie in the multiplication of pleasures, 
ilmusement, no doubt, occupies a very disproportionate 
place in many lives, and many men grossly mismanage 
their pleasures, and the amount of amusement expected 
by all classes and ages has within the last generation 
greatly increased. But those who have realised the in- 
finite pathos of human life, and the vast variety of 
human tastes, characters and temptations, will hesitate 
much to abridge the sum of human enjoyment, and 
will look with an indulgent eye on many pleasures 
which are far from cultivated, elevating, and refined, 
provided they are not positively vicious, and- do not 
bring with them grave and manifest evils. What is 
really to be deplored is the inordinate and ever-in- 
creasing expenditure on things which add nothing, or 
almost nothing, to human enjoyment. It is the race 
of luxury, the mere ostentation of wealth, which 
values all things by their cost. 



394 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch, iv. 

This feeling is wholly distinct from the love of art. 
To minds infected with it beauty itself is nothing if it 
is common. The rose and the violet make way for the 
stephanotis and the orchid. Common fruits and vege- 
tables are produced at great expense in an unnatural 
season. The play is estimated by the splendour of its 
scenery. Innumerable attendants, gorgeous uphol- 
stery, masses of dazzling jewellery, rare dishes from dis- 
tant countries, ingenious and unexpected refinements 
of costly luxury, are the chief marks of their entertain- 
ments, and the hand of the millionaire is always seen. 
Xor is the evil restricted to the small circle of the very 
rich. From rank to rank the standard of social re- 
quirement is raised, making society more cumbrous, 
extravagant, and ostentatious, driving from it by the 
costliness of its accessories many who are eminently 
fitted to adorn it, and ruining many others by the com- 
petition of idle, joyless, useless display. It is a ten- 
dency which vulgarises and materialises vast fields of 
English life, and is preparing great catastrophes for 
the future. 

The acquisition of gigantic fortunes in trade or 
speculation, and the desire to attain by these fortunes 
a high social position, are the main causes of this in- 
creasing luxury, which is so prominent in England 
and America, and which contrasts so unfavourably 
with the far simpler and more human social inter- 
course of many foreign countries. Economists per- 
haps press their case too far when they assert that this 
kind of expenditure is wholly unproductive. The at- 
traction of luxury, and of the social consideration it 
implies, is a great spur to labour, and especially to the 
continuance of labour after a moderate competence has 
been acquired. But economists are not wrong in point- 
ing out the enormous waste of the means of happiness 



CH. IV. INCREASING LUXURY 395 

which it implies^, and its moral and political evils are at 
least as great as its economical ones. 

An aristocracy occupying an undisputed social po- 
sition might do much to check this tendency. At a 
time when the class whom they specially represent are 
passing through the dark shadow of a ruinous agri- 
cultural depression, it would be peculiarly graceful and 
patriotic if those among them who, through their ur- 
ban properties or their mineral wealth, have escaped 
the calamity would set, without compulsion, the ex- 
ample of a simpler scale of living. Some of them have 
done so. Others have themselves retained, amid very 
luxurious surroundings, much personal simplicity of 
life and tastes. The doctrine of the moral obligation 
attaching to wealth is one of the oldest of the moral 
convictions of mankind. ' If thou art exalted after 
having been low,^ says an Egyptian writer who is be- 
lieved to have lived no less than 3,800 years before the 
Christian era,^ ' if thou art rich after having been 
needy, harden not thy heart because of thy elevation. 
Thou hast but become a steward of the good things be- 
longing to the gods.^ On the whole, this truth is pro- 
bably more acted on by rich men whose properties are 
connected with land than by any others. England 
always furnishes many examples of great fortunes 
expended with noble, judicious, and unselfish munifi- 
cence, sometimes in public works which no moderate 
fortune could undertake, very often in raising the 
whole level of comfort and civilisation over an exten- 
sive property. One of the greatest landlords in Eng- 
land told me that he calculated that, in his own case, 
for every 100/. that came out of land, 75?. went back to 



^ The Prisse Papyrus. See Miss Edwardes's Pharaohs.^ Fellahs., 
and Explorers., p. 220. 



396 DEMOCRACY aND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

it. Many otliers, as patrons of art^ have blended tlieir 
personal gratification with much benefit to the conntr3^ 

Much, too, of what appears luxury is not really 
selfish. The vast parks that surround so many great 
country houses are in numerous cases thrown ojDcn 
with such a liberality that they are virtually public 
property, though supported exclusively by private 
means ; and those houses themselves, and the art trea- 
sures which they contain, have been for the most part 
freely exhibited to the world. It must, however, be 
acknowledged that the great wave of increasing luxu- 
ry which has swept over England has been fully felt 
in aristocratic circles, and especially in country life. 
Among the not very numerous mistakes that have been 
made by the great English landed gentry as a class, 
one of the most conspicuous has, I think, been that 
enormous over - preservation of game which grew up 
in the last years of the eighteenth century-, ^ and has 
steadily increased to our own day. It has diminished 
the productiveness of great areas of English land, 
brought into the country a new form of extravagant 
luxury, and essentially altered and lowered the charac- 
ter of field sports. The Epicurean sportsman wdio, 
without even the trouble of loading his guns, shoots 
down by hundreds the pheasants which are bred like 
chickens upon his estates, and which are driven by an 
army of beaters into his presence, is by no means a 
beautiful figure in modern country life, however great 
may be the skill which he displays. 

But the worst aspect of plutocracy is the social and 
political influence of dishonestly acquired wealth. 



' See the article on ' Battue time in some Continentat coun- 

Shootins: ' in Blaine's Encyclo- tries before it was introduced 

pcsdia of Field Sports. Battue into England, 
shooting had existed for some 



CH. IV. PLUTOCRACY 397 

While most of the fields of patronage and professional 
life have been greatly puirified during the present cen- 
tury^ the conditions of modern enterprise in the chief 
European countries^ and still more in the United 
States, give much scope for kinds of speculation and 
financing which no honest man would pursue, and by 
which, in many conspicuous instances, colossal fortunes 
have been acquired. It is an evil omen for the future 
of a nation when men who have acquired such fortunes 
force their way into great social positions, and become 
the objects of admiration, adulation, and imitation. 
One of the first duties, and one of the chief uses, of 
courts and aristocracies is to guard the higher walks of 
society from this impure contact ; and when courts and 
aristocracies betray their trust, and themselves bow 
before the golden idol, the period of their own downfall 
is not far distant. 

No one who is acquainted with society in England, 
France, and America can be blind to the disquieting 
signs of the increasing prominence of this evil. With 
the decline of rank and the breaking down of old cus- 
toms, conventionalities, and beliefs, the power of wealth 
in the world seems to grow. Where cynicism and scep- 
ticism have sapped the character, wealth comes too fre- 
quently to be looked on as the one reality of life, and 
as atoning for every misdeed. When the decent inter- 
val has elapsed, when the period of colossal swindling 
has been duly succeeded by the period of lavish and 
splendid hospitality, mingled, perhaps, with ostenta- 
tious charity, the love of pleasure and luxury begins to 
operate, and the old social restrictions give way. In 
England, it may be truly said that the existence and 
social supremacy of an aristocracy is some barrier 
against the predominance of ill-gotten riches. Peer- 
ages are often granted to men whose chief claim is 



398 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

their wealth, but;, with few and doubtful exceptions, 
this has been only done when wealth has been honestly 
acquired, and, on the whole, usefully, or at least re- 
spectably, employed. In political life, it is to be feared, 
the standard is less high. If modern British Govern- 
ments are not greatly maligned, there have been in- 
stances in which peerages and other honours have been 
very literally bought, though by a circuitous process, 
in the shape of large contributions to party funds ; and 
other instances where they have been notoriously given 
to fix waverers, to reward apostasies, to induce j)oli- 
ticians to vote for measures which they would other- 
wise have opposed. But it is, perhaps, not too much 
to say that this is the only form of dishonesty which 
has of late years been rewarded by a seat in the House 
of Lords. For the most part, the influence of Court 
and aristocracy has been on the side of social puri- 
ty and financial integrity, though there have been ob- 
vious and lamentable exceptions. 

The foregoing considerations will, I think, serve to 
show that the hereditary element exercises a more se- 
rious and far-reaching influence over the well-being of 
the nation than is sometimes supposed. At the same 
time, it is impossible to deny that the House of Lords 
does not occupy the position, and that its deliberations 
do not carry with them the weight, that might be ex- 
pected from the elements of which it is composed. An 
assembly seems sometimes strangely greater, and some- 
times strangely less, than its members, and few things 
are more curious than the contrast between the too 
evident debility of the House of Lords in its corporate 
capacity, and the great weight and influence of a large 
number of individual peers. As Bagehot has justly 
observed, the peers who exercise the greatest influence 
in county life are seldom those who appear most promi- 



CH. IV. DEBILITY OF THE HOUSE 399 

nently in the debates of the House of Lords. Except 
on great and critical occasions, the attendance in the 
House is very small : on an average only about a fifth 
part of its members are present, and important deci- 
sions have sometimes been taken in the presence of not 
more than a dozen members.^ Every peer who passes 
from the House of Commons to the House of Lords is 
struck by its chilling, well-bred apathy, by the inatten- 
tion and indifference of the few men who, on normal 
occasions, are scattered over its empty benches while 
some statesman of first-class eminence is unfolding his 
policy. A few remarks, chiefly addressed to the re- 
porters, by the leader of the House, by the leader of 
the Opposition, by a great lawyer on each side, and, 
perhaps — if the dinner-hour is not too near — by one or 
two independent peers, usually constitute its debates. 
There are few atmospheres in which young and rising- 
talent has so much difficulty in emerging. 

No such apathy is displayed by individual peers in 
the affairs of their counties ; or in the special Com- 
mittees of the House of Lords, which often do admi- 
rable work ; or by the members of that House who take 
part in the joint Committees of the two Houses ; and 
in the few questions which strongly rouse the interest 
of the House its debates are often models of grave, elo- 
quent, and exhaustive discussion. Many causes con- 
spire to the prevailing tone. The rule that only three 
members were needed to form a quorum had a very 
mischievous effect, and a considerable improvement has 
been produced by a recent standing order which pro- 



' See May's Constitutional that in the session of 1885 the 

History^ i. 271-72. In liis average attendance in the House 

speech on the reform of the of Lords was 110, Avliich was 

House of Lords (March 19, almost exactly a fifth part. 
1888), Lord Kosebery stated 



400 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

vides that if on a division thirty lords are not present 
the business on hand shall be adjourned. 

Another slight improvement was the suspension, in 
1868, of the old privilege of the peers to vote by proxy. 
It was not, perhaps, a matter of great practical im- 
portance, for votes are very rarely determined by de- 
bate, and on party questions men^s opinions are early 
formed, and may be easily anticipated. Tlie system of 
pairing, even for long periods, is fully recognised in 
the House of Commons, and proxies, as is well-known, 
are largely employed in the very important meetings 
for the management of companies. At the same time, 
it was easy to attack, and impossible altogether to de- 
fend, a system by which the men who gave the verdict 
were not those who heard the arguments ; and that 
system had also the disadvantage of strengthening two 
of the worst characteristics of the House — the scanty 
attendance of its members, and the excessive power 
often exercised by a single peer. It also increased the 
political importance of the class of peers who, by their 
tastes and habits, are most unfit to be legislators, and 
who, in fact, are habitual non-attendants. Many 
members of the House of Lords are conscious that they 
have no personal competence or turn for legislation. 
Their tastes are of a wholly different description. They 
would never have aspired to election, and, finding 
themselves legislators by accident of birth, and having 
no ambition or other strong motive to impel them, 
they are scarcely ever seen within the House, unless 
they are urgently summoned to some important party 
division. Under the old system, however, they exer- 
cised much habitual influence, as they readily gave 
their proxies to their party chief. 

The absence of such men from a legislative body is 
certainly not to be regretted. Other members of the 



CH. IV. DEBILITY OP THE HOUSE 401 

House feel that their proper sphere of action is else- 
where. The bishops know that their special work lies 
in their dioceses, and, although they were very promi- 
nent in opposition to the Keform Bill of 1832, an 
unwritten conventionality now discourages them from 
taking much part in politics that are unconnected with 
their profession. Some great nobles are beginning to 
feel, with Carlyle, that their true work lies in the wise 
administration of their vast properties, and not in po- 
litical contests, where they can only play a secondary 
and somewhat humiliating part. The consciousness 
that the House of Lords must always, in case of grave 
difference, yield to the House of Commons ; that every 
expression of independent opinion on its part is fol- 
lowed by insolent threats of revolution, often counte- 
nanced or instigated by leaders of one of the parties in 
the State ; that one of its first objects is to avoid com- 
ing into collision with the House of Commons, tends to 
make it distasteful to men of high character and spirit. 
It deprives it of the moral force and confidence without 
which it can never have its due weight in the Consti- 
tution. There is a widespread feeling among its more 
intelligent members that a considerable amount of 
well-bred political languor is very desirable in such a 
Chamber. If it were animated by a strong and earnest 
political spirit it would never acquiesce in the com- 
pletely subordinate position assigned to it, especially as 
this position is largely due to usurpation unsanctioned 
by law. Collisions would inevitably arise, and some 
organic change would follow.^ 



' See some very just, but on Lord Kosehery's motion for 

wonderfully candid and rather the reform of the House of 

cynical, remarks of Lord Salis- Lords (March 19, 1888). 
bury on this subject in a speech 

VOL. I. 26 



402 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

Two other causes conspire in the same direction. 
One of them is the jealousy which the House of Com- 
mons feels at the initiation of Bills in the House of 
Lords. A session of the House of Lords usually con- 
sists of several months of almost comj)lete inactivit}^^ 
followed by a few weeks when the pressure of work sent 
up from the House of Commons is so great, and the 
time in which it must be accomplished so short, that 
it is impossible that the work of revision, which is the 
special task of the Upper House, can be accomplished 
with proper deliberation. Of all the many wastes of 
power that take place in English political life, few are 
more deplorable than this. Social questions have come 
to be, in our day, of a far more real and pressing im- 
portance than purely political ones ; and in the House 
of Lords the country' possesses a legislative body which, 
from its composition, from its comparative leisure, and 
from its position in the Constitution, is j)re-eminently 
fitted to deal with them. In almost every joint Com- 
mittee relating to social questions peers have been 
among the most active and most useful members. Yet, 
during many months of the year the House of Lords is 
almost idle. Its leaders know that the Commons would 
look with distrust on any Bill originating with them, 
and there is little use in introducing Bills which are 
never likely to become law. 

Another cause is the complete exclusion of the House 
of Lords from all financial legislation. In the opinion 
of the best historians, taxation was at one j)eriod im- 
posed separately and independently by Lords and Com- 
mons ; but the Lords taxed only their own body, and 
the Commons the classes tliey represented. After this, 
taxes affecting all classes alike were made by the Com- 
mons, with the advice and assent of the Lords, and 
usually as a result of a conference between the two 



en. IV. AMENDING MONEY BILLS 403 

Houses.'^ Tlie sole right of the Commons to originate 
money Bills was recognised at least as early as the reign 
of Ei chard II., and in the reign of Charles I. the Com- 
mons began to omit to make mention of the Lords in 
the preambles of Bills of Supply, as though the grant 
were exclusively their own, though the Lords were 
always mentioned in the enacting words of the Statute. 
But althougli the L^pper House could not originate 
money Bills, it had for some centuries the full right of 
amending them. There are numerous cases of such 
amendments having been agreed to, and the right was 
not seriously questioned till after the Eestoration. In 
1671 the Commons carried a resolution ' that, in all 
aids given to the King by the Commons, the rate or 
tax ought not to be altered ' ; and in 1GT8 they w^ent 
still further, and resolved ' that all aids and supplies, 
and aids to His Majesty in Parliament, are the sole gift 
of the Commons, and all Bills for the granting of any 
sucli aids and supplies ought to begin with the Com- 
mons, and that it is the undoubted and sole right of 
the Commons to direct, limit, and appoint in such 
Bills the ends, purposes, considerations, conditions, 
limitations, and qualifications of such grants, which 
ought not to be changed or altered by the House of 
Lords. ^ 

The peers were by no means inclined to acquiesce in 
these claims. In the conferences that ensued they ' ut- 
terly denied any such right in the Commons, further 
than was agreed for the beginning of money Bills only.' 
*■ In all other respects,^ they said, ' and to all intents 
and purposes, our legislative power is as full and free 
as theirs ; we granted as well as they ; they could not 
grant without us, not so much as for themselves, much 



Stubbs's Const. Hist.^ iii. 282-83, 496-97. 



404 DEMOCRACY AJND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

less for us ; we were judges and counsellors to consider 
and advise concerning the ends and occasions for money 
as well as they/ with the sole exception that the right 
of beginning Bills was with the Commons. 

Hallam has truly noticed how clearly the prepon- 
derance of argument and precedent in these conferences 
was on the side of the peers/ and a resolution of the 
House of Commons alone has no legal validity ; but 
yet the growing power of the Commons enabled them 
to carry their point. It was never established by law, 
it was never formally admitted by the other House ; 
but it, nevertheless, became a received maxim of the 
Constitution that the House of Lords was precluded, 
not only from originating, but also from amending, 
money Bills. After the Revolution this power was 
tacitly extended by the habit of enlarging greatly the 
number of Bills which were considered money Bills. 
Even measures authorising fees, or imposing pecuni- 
ary penalties, or making provision for the payment of 
salaries, or for compensation for abolished offices, have 
been treated as money Bills, and therefore beyond the 
amending power of the Lords. ^ 

It has been, however, extremely difficult to maintain 
this position consistently, for large classes of measures 
which have no financial object have incidental, and 
sometimes very remote, financial effects, and occasion- 



' Hallam's Const. Hist., iii. the deyelopment of the powers 

28-30 (Cabinet edition). of the House of Lords. See, 

- Hallam's Const. Hist.., iii. too, from opposite points of 

30-33 ; May's Parliameniary vieAv, Mr. Spalding's House of 

Practice (ed. 1893). pp. 542-46. Lords, and Sir W. Charley's 

Mr. Pike, in his Constitutional Crusade against the Constitu- 

History of the House of Lords., Hon., 1895. This last book is 

and ]\rr. ]\Iacp]ierson on The especially useful as a collection 

Baronage and the Senate., have of facts and speeches relating 

recently traced in much detail to its recent history. * 



CH. IV. REJECTION OF MONEY BILLS 405 

all}^, for the sake of public coiiyenience, tlie House of 
Commons has slightly relaxed its rule, and allowed 
amendments to pass which indirectly involved salaries 
or fees. Thus, for example, the operation of a Bill re- 
lating to industrial schools has been prolonged by an 
amendment in the Lords, although some pecuniary 
consequences would follow the prolongation. Some- 
times the whole financial clause in a non-financial Bill 
has been rejected by the Lords, this being considered 
to fall within the class of rejection, and not of amend- 
ment. In 1831 a standing order was made directing 
the Speaker, in cases where an amendment in the 
Lords involved some pecuniary penalty, to report to 
the House whether the object of the Lords appeared to 
be ' to impose, vary, or take away any pecuniary charge 
or burthen on the subject,^ or whether they only in- 
tended '^the punishment of offences, and the House 
shall determine whether it may be expedient in such 
particular case to insist upon the exercise of their pri- 
vilege." In 1849 the Commons agreed that they would 
not insist on their privilege if the object of a pecuniary 
penalty was merely to secure the execution of the Act, 
or the punishment and prevention of offences, or when 
fees were imposed in respect to a benefit taken or 
service rendered, or when they form part of a private 
Bill for a local or personal act. In 1858 they agreed, 
in the case of private Bills, to accept ''any clauses 
sent down from the House of Lords which refer to 
tolls and charges for services performed, and which are 
not in the nature of a tax." Sometimes it has been 
found convenient that non-financial Bills which, how- 
ever, involve salaries or fees should originate in the 
Lords. In these cases financial provisoes have been pre- 
pared, discussed, and voted on in the Lords, but with- 
drawn at the third reading. They were, therefore, not 



406 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

brought before the Commons as part of the Bill, but 
they were printed in red ink on the margin, so that 
the House of Commons had the suggestions of the 
Lords informally before it, and was, of course, at liber- 
ty to treat them as it pleased. By these expedients 
some difficulties have been overcome and some con- 
veniences attained without altering tlie received rule 
that the Lords have no power of originating or amend- 
ing money Bills. '^ 

One power, however, they seemed still to possess. 
'No tax could be legally imposed except by an Act of 
Parliament, and as there can be no Act of Parliament 
without the assent of the Lords, the Upper House had 
at least the power of withholding that assent, and thus 
rejecting the Bill. Nothing in law, nothing in history, 
and, it may be added, nothing in reason, denied them 
this 230wer, and for some time after the right of amend- 
ment had vanished it was fully acknowledged. But 
this j)ower also went the way of the royal veto. The 
doctrine that taxation was essentially a matter for the 
Commons alone grew and strengthened, especially du- 
ring the controversies that arose out of the American 
revolution. ^ Taxation,^ Chatham once said, '^is no 
part of the governing or legislative power. The taxes 
are a voluntary gift and grant of the Commons alone. 
In legislation the three estates of the realm are alike 
concerned ; but the concurrence of the peers and 
Crown to a tax is only necessary to clothe it with the 
form of law. The gift and grant is of the Commons 
alone.' This doctrine is very far from being beyond 
controversy, but it had a popular sound, and it was 
widely accepted. The House of Lords, shrinking from 



^ May's Pari. Practice., pp. 544-49; May's Const. Hist.., i. 482- 
89. 



CH. IV. THE PAPER DUTIES 407 

conflicts of privilege, and perhaps content with the 
indirect influence which its members exercised in the 
Commons, very rarely even discussed measures which 
were exclusively or mainly financial, though it fre- 
quently rejected or postponed measures incidentally 
affecting taxation. 

The last great conflict on this subject was in 1860, 
when Mr. Gladstone, as Chancellor of the Exchequer 
in the Government of Lord Palmerston, proposed the 
abolition of the paper duties. The repealing measure 
was introduced in the usual way as a separate Bill, but 
it formed part of a large and complicated Budget in- 
volving extensive remissions of indirect taxation, the 
imposition of a number of small taxes, the reimposi- 
tion of the income-tax — which was intended to have 
expired in this year — its increase from ^d. to IQd. in 
the pound, and a provision for bringing three-fourths 
of this tax, instead of half only, into the Exchequer 
within the financial year. The paper duty, which it 
was determined to repeal, was estimated at 1,200,000/. 
or 1,300,000/.! 

Several things contributed to make so great a sacri- 
fice of ordinary revenue at this time seem of doubtful 
expediency. A commercial treaty with France had 
just been concluded, and it would involve a great low- 
ering of duties. The political relations with France 
were, also, not unclouded, and the prevalent feeling of 
distrust had shoAvn itself in the expenditure of a very 
large sum in fortifying our dockyards. A war with 
China was raging, and it had assumed more formidable 
dimensions during the period between the introduction 
of the Budget and its completion in the Commons. 



1 See Sir Stafford Northcote's Twenty Years of Financial Po- 
licy^ pp. 351-56. 



408 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. rv. 

The renewal and the high and increasing rate of the 
income-tax fell, also, heavily on large classes. The 
feeling of the House of Commons was very significantly 
shown by diminishing majorities. The second reading 
of the repeal of the paper duties was carried by a ma- 
jority of fifty-three. On the third reading the Govern- 
ment majority had sunk to nine. 

"W'hen a poAverful and popular Government could 
only command such a majority on the third reading of a 
great contested measure^ there could be little doubt that 
the real opinion of the House of Commons was hostile 
to that measure. It is probable that most members of 
the Cabinet would have gladly postponed to another 
year the repeal of the paper duties. But it is not easy 
for a Government to recede from a position which it 
has formally adopted ; and it was impossible for Lord 
Palmerston to do so without breaking up his Govern- 
ment when so important a colleague as Mr. Gladstone 
was determined at all hazards to carry the measure. 
The real opinions of Lord Palmerston are clearly dis- 
closed in an extract which has been published from a 
letter written by him to the Queen, announcing to Her 
Majesty the extremely small majority by which the Bill 
had passed its tliird reading in the Commons. •' This/ 
he writes. ' may probably encourage the House of 
Lords to throw out the Bill when it comes to their 
House, and Viscount Palmerston is bound in duty to 
say that, if they do so, they will perform a good public 
service. Circumstances have greatly changed since the 
measure was agreed to by the Cabinet, and although it 
woukl undoubtedly have been difficult for the Govern- 
ment to have given up the Bill, yet, if Parliament were 
to reject it, the Government might well submit to so 
welcome a defeat." ' 

' Martinis Life of the Prince Consort, v. 100. 



CH. IV. THE PAPER DUTIES 409 

The House of Lords acted as Lord Palmerston anti- 
cipated, and evidently desired. While the other Bills 
relating to finance were accepted without question, 
the Bill repealing the paper duties was thrown out by 
a majority of no less than eighty-nine. 

Mr. Gladstone, in a speech of extraordinary elo- 
quence, which was eminently calculated, as it was 
manifestly intended, to inflame and envenom the 
difference between the Houses, denounced this pro- 
ceeding as ''the most gigantic and the most dangerous 
innovation that has been attempted in our times,^ and 
a large part of the Liberal party, both in the House 
and in the country, were ready to support him in a 
violent collision with the Lords. Lord Palmerston, 
however, in a very difficult position, conducted the 
controversy with a skill, tact, and moderation that 
could not be surpassed, and by his eminently patriotic 
conduct a great danger was averted. A Commission 
was appointed to examine precedents, and, under the 
influence of Lord Palmerston, the House of Commons 
contented itself with carrying three resolutions. The 
first asserted "' that the right of granting aids and sup- 
plies to the Crown is in the Commons alone.' The 
second, while acknowledging that the Lords had some- 
times exercised the power of rejecting Bills relating to 
taxation, stated that this power was justly regarded by 
the Commons with peculiar jealousy, as affecting their 
right to grant supplies ; and the third stated Hhat, to 
guard for the future against an undue exercise of that 
power by the Lords, and to secure to the Commons 
their rightful control over taxation and Supply, this 
House has in its own hands the power so to impose 
and remit taxes, and to frame Bills of Supply, that 
the right of the Commons as to the matter, manner, 
measure, and time may be maintained inviolate.' 



410 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

These resolutions were carried unanimously, though 
not without much criticism and after a long and in- 
structive debate. It was asserted on the one side, and 
not denied on the other, that the House of Lords 
had acted in perfect accordance with the law of the 
land. In the conferences that had taken place be- 
tween the two Houses after the Restoration, when the 
right of amending money Bills was denied to the 
Lords, the Managers, on the part of the Commons, 
formally and expressly admitted the right of the Upper 
House to reject them. This right, it was said, was a 
settled principle of the Constitution, and it had never 
been withdrawn, surrendered, or denied. The Consti- 
tution, by making the assent of the House of Lords 
essential to the validity of a tax, clearly implied that 
the House of Lords had the right of withholding that 
assent. Blackstone, while enumerating in emphatic 
terms its disabilities in matters of finance, described its 
right of rejecting money Bills as absolutely incon- 
testable.^ Nor was there on this point any real differ- 
ence of opinion among writers on the Constitution.^ 
'^ Nothing,' said Lord Lyndhurst in the House of 
Lords, ' can be found in the Parliamentary Journals, 
or in any history of parliamentary proceedings, to 
show that our right to reject money Bills has been 
questioned.' The Commission which had just been 



^ ' It would be extremely dan- House to exert any power but 

gerous to give the Lords any that of rejecting. They will 

power of framing new taxes for not permit the least alteration 

the subject. It is sufficient that or amendment to be made by 

they have a power of rejecting the Lords ' {Blackstone.^ Book i. 

if they think the Commons too chapter ii.). 

lavish or improvident in their ^ gg^. Hallam's History of 

grants. But so reasonably jea- England., in. SI; Mscy's Parlia- 

lous are the Commons of this mentary Practice., p. 550 (ed. 

valuable privilege, that herein 1893). 
they will not suffer the other 



CH. IV. THE PAPER DUTIES 411 

appointed to examine precedents had discovered be- 
tween 1714 and 1860 about thirty-six cases of Bills re- 
pealing duties or imposts of some kind, and a much 
greater number of Bills imposing charges, which had 
passed through the Commons, and which had failed in 
the Lords. In all or nearly all these cases the action 
of the House of Lords was unchallenged. 

In the face of such facts it was surely absurd to 
argue that the House of Lords was not within its 
rights in throwing out the paper duties. And if it 
had a right to do so, it was not difficult to defend the 
expediency of its act. This great sacrifice of perma- 
nent revenue had been urged on political rather than 
financial grounds. It had been introduced at a time 
when both the political and the financial prospects 
were singularly overclouded, and since its first intro- 
duction the circumstances of the country had greatly 
clianged, and the inexpediency of the measure had 
greatly increased. The small and steadily declining 
majorities in the House of Commons clearly showed 
that, without strong party and ministerial pressure, it 
could not have been carried. 

In reply to these arguments it was contended that, 
though the House of Lords had acted within its techni- 
cal rights, its conduct in throwing out an important 
Bill relating to the ways and means of the year was 
contrary to ^constitutional usage,^ and inconsistent 
with the principle the Commons had frequently as- 
serted, that ''all aids and supplies granted to Her 
Majesty in Parliament are the sole and entire gifts of 
the Commons.' By whose authority or action, it was 
asked, would the paper duties be collected in the en- 
suing year ? Would it not be solely by that of the 
House of Lords ? If the Commons had combined in 
a single measure the increase of the income-tax and 



412 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

the repeal of the paper diitie?^ it would have been 
confessedly bej^ond the power of the Lords to amend 
the Bill by accepting one part of it and rejecting 
the other. Was the course they had actually pur- 
sued essentially different from this ? To reject an 
important money Bill^ and thereby disturb the balance 
of the financial arrangements of the year, was in reality 
a greater infringement of the sole competence of the 
House of Commons in matters of finance than to in- 
troduce into a money Bill some trifling amendment. 
The precedents that had been adduced were jealously 
scrutinised, and pronounced to be inapplicable. The 
Bills that had been rejected had been political Bills, 
discussed and rejected on ]3olitical, and not on finan- 
cial, grounds, and they were Bills by which finance 
was only slightly, incidentally, and remotely affected. 
Most of them were measures of protection, encoura- 
ging different forms of industry by duties or bounties. 
Others were measures imposing or remitting penalties, 
creating or abolishing salaried offices. The rejection 
of such Bills was a very different thing from an at- 
tempt to recast or materially modify the Budget of the 
year. For two hundred years, it was said, the House 
of Lords had never taken such a step, never rejected 
on purely financial grounds a Bill imposing or remit- 
ting taxation. Great commercial interests would be 
affected by its action, and still more by the precedent 
it established, for men of business had hitherto always 
assumed that they might take their measures and base 
their calculations on the Budget as soon as it had 
passed the Commons. 

Whatever may be thought of the weight of argu- 
ment, the weight of power was on the side of the Com- 
mons. As a matter of reason, indeed, resolutions had 
been adopted and precedents formed which reduced 



CH. IV. TRIUMPH OF THE COMMONS 413 

the whole question at issue to hopeless confusion. It 
was absurd to assert^ as the Commons had repeatedly 
done, that money grants were their ' sole and entire 
gift/ when they were unable to grant a farthing witli- 
out the assent of the Lords ; and the power of rejection 
and the power of amendment stood so much on the 
same ground, and were in some cases so indissolubly 
connected, that it was very difficult to accept the one 
and to deny the other. By a tacit understanding, fully 
acquiesced in, though unestablished by law, the House 
of Lords had no power of amending money Bills, while 
its power of rejecting them had been established by a 
long chain of precedents, formally acknowledged by 
the House of Commons, and admitted as unquestiona- 
ble by every serious writer on the Constitution. Yet 
it was very evident that the one power might be so 
used as to be practically equivalent to the other. The 
Commons, however, in the year after this dispute, 
adopted a method which effectually prevented the 
Lords from exercising any revising power in finance. 
They combined the repeal of the paper duties with all 
the other portions of the Budget in a single Bill, and 
the Lords had, therefore, no power of rejecting one 
part unless they took the responsibility of rejecting the 
whole. This method has since become the usual one. 
So completely has the sole competence of the House of 
Commons been recognised, that it has become the cus- 
tom to levy new duties and increased duties from the 
time they had been agreed to by the House of Com- 
mons, without waiting for the assent of the Lords and 
of the Crown, which alone could give them the force of 
law. 

Much of the jealousy of the interference of the Lords 
with financial matters which was displayed at the time 
of the Eestoration was due to the fact that this body 



414 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

was then greatly under the influence of the Cro-UTi, and 
that the chief constitutional conflicts of that period lay 
between the poAver of the Commons and the power of 
the Crown. A still more important consideration was 
the belief that a tax is the free gift of the peoj^le, and 
that it ought, therefore, to be under the sole control of 
the re|)resentatiYes of those who give it. Such a con- 
trol was once considered a guarantee that no one could 
be taxed unduly, unrighteously, or against his will. 
The old principle of connecting indissolubly taxation 
and representation has, probably, never been more 
loudly professed than in the present day ; but this is 
only one of the many instances in which men cheat 
themselves by forms and phrases, while the underly- 
ing meaning has almost wholly passed away. The 
members of the House of Lords are owners of a great 
proportion of the largest properties in Great Britain, 
yet they have no part in enacting the imperial taxes 
they pay. Their House is excluded from all participa- 
tion in finance, and they have no voice in the House of 
Commons. At the same time, the whole drift of demo- 
cratic government is to diminish or to destroy the con- 
trol which property in England once had over taxation. 
As I have already observed, the true meaning and jus- 
tification of the special political powers vested in large 
tax-payers was, that those who chiefly pay should chiefly 
control ; that the kinds of property which contribute 
most to support government should have most weight 
in regulating it : that it is one of the first duties of a 
legislator to provide that one class should not have tb.e 
power of voting the taxes, while another class were 
obliged to pay them. It is plain that this fundamen- 
tal element in the British Constitution is being rapidly 
destroyed. One of the most popular and growing ideas 
in English politics is, that by giving an overwhelming 



CH. IV. FINANCIAL CONTROL 415 

voting power to the poorer classes tliey may be able to 
attain a high level of well-being, by compelling the 
propertied classes to pay more and more for their 
benefit. 

A broad distinction must be drawn between the 
maxim that the Commons alone should have the right 
to originate taxes, and the maxim that the Upper 
House should have no power either of amending or 
rejecting its financial legislation. The former right is 
recognised, after the English model, in most of the 
constitutions of free nations, though there are several 
exceptions. The most remarkable are Austria, Prussia, 
the German Empire, and the Swiss Federation, in all 
of which a financial measure may be introduced equal- 
ly either in the Upper or the Lower House. ^ In the 
United States, the House of Representatives maintains 
the sole right of originating taxes ; but in the State 
legislatures a different principle prevails, and it is said 
that there are twenty-one States in which financial 
measures may be brought forward in either House. ^ 
In a few Continental constitutions the Upper Chamber 
has the power of rejecting, but not of amending, money 
Bills,^ but in most constitutions it is granted both 
powers ; and this is also the system in the United 
States. 

There is a great and manifest danger in placing the 
most important of all branches of legislation in tlie 
uncontrolled power of one House. It leaves the con- 
stitution absolutely unbalanced in the department in 
which beyond all others there is most danger, and 
where balance and restriction are most required ; and 
it is, I think, much to be desired that, if the Upper 



1 Morizot-Thibault, Des Droits de Finances^ pp. 64, GO, 78, 94. 
ties Chambres Ilautes en matiere - Ibid. p. 82. -■ Ibid. n. 134. 



416 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch, iv. 

House should ever be so remodelled as to carry with, it 
increased weight in the country, it should be entrusted 
with the same powers of control and revision in matters 
of finance that are possessed by the American Senate. 
The evils, however, that might in this department 
be foared in England from the omnipotence of the 
House of Commons have been greatly mitigated by tv\^o 
facts. The one is, that a very large proportion of the 
taxes of the country are permanent taxes, and are, 
therefore, not the subjects of annual debates. The 
other is the rule of the House of Commons, which I 
have mentioned in a former chapter, that no petition, 
and no motion for a grant or charge upon the public 
revenue, can be received unless it is recommended by 
the ministers of the Crown. Though this rule, giving 
the responsible ministers the sole right of proposing 
taxation, rests upon no law, but simply on a standing 
order of 1706, it is no exaggeration to say that it is one 
of the most valuable parts of the British Constitution. 
In the great changes that have taken place in the dis- 
position and balance of powers, many of the old con- 
stitutional checks have become obsolete, inoperative, 
or useless ; but the w^hole tendency of modern politics 
has only increased the importance of the provision 
which places the initiation in matters of finance exclu- 
sively in Grovernment hands. In the present state of 
Parliaments, and with the motives that at present 
govern English public life, it is difficnlt to exaggerate 
either the corruption or the extravagance that might 
arise if every member were at liberty to ingratiate him- 
self with particular classes of interests by proposing 
money grants in their favour. 

The exclusion, however, of the House of Lords from 
every form of financial control naturally deprived it of 
its chief power in the State ; and it is still further 



CH. IV. JUDICIAL FUNCTIONS 417 

weakened by the fact that the creation and overthrow 
of ministries rest entirely with the other -House. In 
the theory of the Constitution, the sovereign chooses 
the head of the Government, but, except in the very 
rare cases of nearly balanced claims, the sovereign has 
no choice. The statesman whom the dominant party 
in the House of Commons follow as their leader is irre- 
sistibly designated, and, if he is overthrown, it must 
be by the vote of the House of Commons. Since the re- 
signation of Lord Grey in May, 1832, no ministry has 
resigned in consequence of a hostile vote of the Lords. 
Some other changes may be noticed in the position 
of the House. In addition to its legislative functions, 
it is the supreme law court of the country, and this 
very important privilege has been the subject of extraor- 
dinary abuses. It is not here necessary to enter at any 
length into the curious and intricate history of this 
power. It seems to have grown out of the right the 
peers once possessed, as counsellors of the King, to re- 
ceive petitions for the redress of all abuses ; but it was 
fully organised in successive stages, and in spite of 
much opposition from the House of Commons, in the 
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The right of 
hearing judicial appeals extended to all the peers, even 
to those who were perfectly unversed in matters of law ; 
and for considerable periods after the Kevolution, and 
especially in the reigns of George II. and George IIL, 
the Chancellor sat alone in the House of Lords, some- 
times to hear appeals from himself, though two lay 
peers had to be formally present in order to make 
the requisite quorum. Somers, Hardwicke, Thurlow, 
Mansfield, and Eldon have all lieard appeals in this 
fashion.^ After this time lawyers multiplied in the 



May's Const. Hist. i. 247. 

27 



418 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

House of Lords^ and the appellate jurisdiction was 
placed by custom exclusively in tlieir hands ; though 
in the case of O^Connell^ when party passions were 
strongly aroused^ there was for a short time some dan- 
ger that the lay lords would insist on their right of 
intervening. The efficiency of the highest Court was 
entirely a matter of chance. The Chancellor was 
usually a good lawyer, but it has sometimes happened 
that a considerable portion of the remainder of the tri- 
bunal consisted of lawyers who, though they had been 
in their day very eminent, were now suifering from all 
the debility of extreme old age, and appeals were no- 
toriously from the more competent tribunal to the less 
competent one. 

It seems strange that this state of things should 
have been so long tolerated ; but, in truth, the English 
people, though they have always been extremely tena- 
cious of their right of making their own laws, have 
usually been singularly patient of abuses in administer- 
ing them. They bore during long generations ruinous 
dela3^s of justice which were elaborately calculated to 
prolong litigation through periods often exceeding the 
natural duration of a lifetime ; enormous multiplica- 
tions of costly and useless archaic forms, intended main- 
ly to swell the gains of one grasping profession. They 
have suffered judges whose faculties were notoriously 
dimmed by the infirmities of extreme old age to preside 
over trials on which lives, fortunes, and reputations 
depended ; and even now this profession, which, be3^ond 
almost any other, requires the full clearness, concen- 
tration, and energy of a trained intellect, is exempt 
from the age limit which is so severely imposed on other 
classes of Civil Servants. It is quite in accordance with 
this spirit that they should have long endured, with 
scarcely a murmur, such an appellate jurisdiction as I 



CH. IV. LIFE PEERAGES 419 

have described. English writers often dwells with just 
pride^ on the contrast between the political freedom en- 
joyed in Great Britain and the political servitude that 
existed in France in the eighteenth century. If they 
compared^ in their judicial aspects^ the House of Lords 
of that period with the Parliament of Paris, the compa- 
I'ison would be much less flattering to the national pride. 

The extremely unsatisfactory condition of the House 
of Lords, considered as the supreme tribunal of the 
country, was acutely felt in the present century, and 
the opinion grew in ministerial circles that the best way 
of strengthening it was by introducing into the House 
a certain number of lawyers as life peers. The Cabinet 
of Lord Liverpool at one time resolved upon this step, 
but Lord Liverpool himself changed his mind, and it 
was abandoned. In 1851, Lord John Russell offered a 
life peerage to an eminent judge, but it was declined ;i 
but in 1856 the Government of Lord Palmerston took 
the startling step of creating by royal prerogative Baron 
Parke a life peer, under the title of Lord Wensleydale. 
The fact that he might just as well have been made an 
hereditary peer, as he was considerably past middle life, 
and had no living son, gave an unmistakable signifi- 
cance to the creation. 

As is well known, the attempt was successfully re- 
sisted by the House of Lords. The opposition was led 
with masterly ability by Lord Lyndhurst, and, with the 
exception of a not very powerful Chancellor, it was sup- 
ported by all the law lords in the House. It was ac- 
knowledged, indeed, that such peerages had been made 
in remote periods of English history, and that Coke, 
and Blackstone following Coke, had asserted their le- 



' See a speech of Lord Granville in the debate on Lord Wens- 
leydale's peerage, February 7, 1856. 



420 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

gality ; but the supporters of the measure were com- 
pelled to admit that for the space of 400 years no 
commoner had been introduced into the House of 
Lords by such a patent as that of Lord Wensleydale. 
There had, it is true, been a few peerages for life con- 
ferred upon women. It was a dignity which seems 
to haye been specially selected for the mistress of the 
King, and Charles 11. , James II., George I., and 
George II., had in this way raised their mistresses to 
the peerage. Since the creation of the Countess of 
Yarmouth by George II., however, there had been no 
peerage of this kind ; and a life peerage conferred on 
a woman introduced no one into the House of Lords. 
The only other attempt to establish a modern prece- 
dent was derived from the fact that the sovereign pos- 
sessed, and exercised, the power of conferring peerages 
on childless men, with remainders to relations to whom 
they could not, without special permission, have de- 
scended. It was obvious, however, that this formed 
no real precedent, for it was Nature, and not patent, 
that prevented these peers from transmitting their peer- 
ages in the usual way. 

The legal maxim. Nullum tempus occurrit regi, was 
quoted in defence of life peerages ; but in spite of it 
the lawyers contended, as it seems to me with good rea- 
son, that a prerogative which had been for 400 years 
unexercised, and which was exercised only at a time 
when the position of the sovereign and the aristocracy 
in the Constitution was utterly different from what it 
now is — at a time when it was not unusual to sum- 
mon to the House of Lords commoners who were mar- 
ried to peeresses to represent their wives — at a time 
when the House of Lords was able, of its own authority, 
to select a Eegent for the kingdom, ought not to be 
revived by a mere act of power. 



CH. IV. LIFE PEERAGES 421 

N"o reasonable man, indeed, will now regard the di- 
rect influence of the sovereign as a danger to English 
liberty ; but revivals of long-dormant royal preroga- 
tives should be carefully watched, for they are certain 
to pass into the hands of the Cabinet ministers. It 
was a clear and well-established prerogative of the 
Crown to remodel the representation by summoning 
unrepresented places to send members to the House of 
Commons, or by discontinuing to summon places Avhich 
had hitherto been represented. This prerogative had 
been exercised at a much later period than that on 
which the precedents for Lord Wensleydale^s creation 
were based, and it had even been heard of in our own 
century. In the course of the debates on the Reform 
Bill of 1832, an Irish Solicitor-General had suggested 
that the obstruction of the House of Lords might be over- 
come by simply using the royal prerogative of creating 
or disenfranchising constituencies in accordance with 
the provisions of the Bill ; and O'Connell contended 
that it was in the full legal power of the sovereign to 
annul the Irish Union, without the intervention of 
either Lords or Commons, by summoning Irish constitu- 
encies to send their representatives to Dublin. No one 
can for a moment imagine that a modern House of 
Commons would tolerate such an exercise of the pre- 
rogative, however well supported by historical and legal 
authority ; nor would any Government venture to at- 
tempt it. The prerogative of creating life peers had 
not been resorted to by the ministers who took the 
strongest measures to overcome the resistance or to in- 
crease the numbers of the Upper House. Harley had 
not thought of it when he made twelve peers to carry 
the Peace of Utrecht ; or Pitt when, by lavish creations, 
he carried the Irish Union ; or Grey when he obtained 
the King's assent to the creation of a sufficient number 



422 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

of peers to carry the Eeform Bill of 1832. On the 
whole^ therefore, the House of Lords seems to me to 
have been thoroughly justified in maintaining that the 
sovereign could not, by a patent of life peerage, in- 
troduce new members into the House of Lords. An 
other 23atent was accordingly made out, and Lord Wens- 
leydale entered the House on the same terms as his 
brother-peers. 

The conduct of the House of Lords on this occasion 
has been much blamed by some considerable authorities. 
Freeman has denounced it with extreme violence, as a 
departure-from the precedents of early English history/ 
and Bagehot, with much more reason, has lamented 
that the House neglected a great opportunity of invi- 
gorating its constitution by making possible a gradual 
infusion of life peers.^ Powerful, however, as are the 
arguments in favour of life peerages, I do not think 
that they ought to have been created by a simple 
revival of a long-dormant prerogative, without statu- 
tory authority or limitation. An attempt was made by 
Lord John Russell, in 1869, to introduce life peers un- 
der the authority of an Act of Parliament, limiting the 
number to twenty-eight, and providing that not more 
than four should be made in one year. It was defeated 
on its third reading ; and a very similar but rather 
more extensive measure, which was introduced by Lord 
Salisbury in 1888, was abandoned on account of the 
hostility of Mr. Gladstone. 

The only object of the Government at the time of the 
Wensleydale peerage seems to have been to strengthen 
the appellate jurisdiction, by bringing into the House 
competent lawyers whose fortunes were, perhaps, 



1 Freeman's Historical Es- ' On the Constitution, 

says^ 4tli series, pp. 473-75. 



CH. IV. THE APPELLATE JURISDICTION 423 

deemed inadequate for an hereditary peerage, and who 
would not add to the very considerable number of no- 
ble houses with a legal origin. The state of the appel- 
late jurisdiction continued for several years to be a 
matter of constant complaint, and it gave rise to much 
discussion, and to some abortive measures. At length, 
in 1873, Lord Selborne, as the Chancellor of a Liberal 
Government, succeeded in carrying a Bill transferring 
all English appeals from the House of Lords to a new 
tribunal. Irish and Scotch appeals were left to be 
dealt with in a separate Bill in the ensuing year, and 
the measure that was actually carried was only to come 
into force in the November of 1874. Before that date 
an election and a change of Government took place, 
and it devolved upon Lord Cairns, as the Conservative 
Chancellor, to carry out the new policy. 

He had in the preceding year supported, though not 
without some reluctance, the measure of Lord Sel- 
borne, and his first intention on arriving at power was 
to complete it on the same lines, by transferring Scotch 
and Irish appeals to the new tribunal. It soon, how- 
ever, appeared that a strong hostile feeling had grown 
up in the country. In England, it was found to be an 
unpopular thing to deprive the House of Lords of its 
ancient jurisdiction ; while Scotland and Ireland pro- 
tested against the transfer of tlieir appeals to any less 
dignified body than a branch of the Imperial Legis- 
lature. It was observed that a special clause of the 
Scotch Act of Union had provided that there should 
be no right of appeal from a Scotch to an English 
court. On the other hand, it was generally felt that 
it would be inexpedient to have different courts of 
appeal for the different parts of the British Isles. In 
the face of this strong demonstration of opinion Lord 
Cairns changed his policy. The operation of Lord 



424 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

Selborne^s Bill was for a short time postponed, and the 
Government resolved to revert in form, though not in 
substance, to the old S3^stem. It was enacted that all 
api^eals from Great Britain and Ireland should be heard 
in the House of Lords, by a court consisting of those 
members of the House who had held high judicial 
offices in the State, with the addition of two, and 
ultimately of four, eminent lawyers, who were to be 
life peers, created under the Statute, and receiving 
large salaries. The presence of three members was 
made necessary to form a court. The life peers might 
speak and vote on all questions like other peers, as 
long as they continued to exercise their judicial func- 
tions ; but if they resigned these they lost their seats, 
though they retained their titles. It was also provided 
that this judicial body might continue its sittings when 
Parliament was prorogued. 

It is, I think, no paradox to say that, of all the many 
Reform Bills which have been carried in our time, this 
reform of the House of Lords has been the most suc- 
cessful. It had a limited and defined object, and it 
perfectly accomplished it, without producing any 
countervailing evil. From the time of Lord Cairns^s 
law, the apjoellate jurisdiction of the House of Lords 
has carried with it all the weight that should attach to 
the supreme tribunal of a nation, and one, at least, of 
the old reproaches of the House has been wiped away. 

A modification of this law, which has considerable 
constitutional importance, was proposed and carried in 
1887, by a Conservative Government. It provided that 
the law peers, if they resigned their judicial offices and 
salaries, should still retain their seats in the House, and 
be allowed to vote and speak like other peers. In this 
way, for the first time in modern days, life peers with- 
out official positions might sit in the House of Lords. 



CH. IV. MODERN CREATIONS 425 

Another slight change in the constitution of the House 
of Lords had been made in 1871, by an Act which de- 
prived bankrupt peers of tlie right of sitting and voting. 

Other changes far less favourable to it have taken 
place. In no previous period of English history have 
creations in the peerage been so numerous as in the 
later portion of the present reign. A long succes- 
sion of short ministries has contributed to increase the 
number, each ministry being desirous of marking its 
term of office by some creations, and the destruction, 
through the competitive system, of most of the old 
methods of rewarding politicians has had the same 
effect. Much, too, is due to a certain vulgarisation or 
cheapening of honours that has undoubtedly character- 
ised the second half of the present century ; and to the 
increased pressure of newly made wealth seeking social 
position. 

An examination of these creations furnishes some 
rather curious results. If we take as our starting- 
point the accession of Lord Grey to power in the 
November of 1830, when the movement towards par- 
liamentary reform acquired a decisive strength, we 
shall find tliat from that period till the death of 
Lord Palmerston, in October 1865, creations were com- 
paratively few. Sir Eobert Peel especially had a strong 
sense of the danger of lowering the dignity of the peer- 
age, and in his two ministries only twelve peers were 
created. In the whole of this period of thirty-five 
years, 148 hereditary peers were created ; 123 of them 
by Liberal, and twenty-five by Conservative, ministries. 
During this space of time the Liberal party were in 
power for rather more than twenty-six years. ^ 



1 A table of the additions to will be found in the ConstUu- 
the hereditary peerage made du- tional Yem--Book for 1893, p. 
ring each ministry since 1830 63. 



426 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

If we now pass to the twenty-seven years from the he- 
ginning of 1866 to the end of 1892, we find no less than 
179 hereditary peerages created — eighty-five of them 
by Liberal, and ninety-four by Conservative, ministers. 
As the Liberals during this period were in power 
for rather more than eleven, and the Conservatives 
for rather more than fifteen, years, tlie proportion of 
peerages created by the two parties was not very differ- 
ent. On both sides the increased profusion of creations 
is very great, and it is remarkable that, even in the 
earlier period which I have reviewed, the number of 
creations was considered by good judges both extrava- 
gant and dangerous.^ 

It will hardly, I think, be contended that modern 
creations have added greatly to the weight and lustre 
of tlie peerage. There have, no doubt, been many ex- 
ceptions. In the field of politics a few very eminent 
men have entered the Upper House while retaining all 
their mental, though not all their ^^hysical, powers. 
Others, of respectable, or even more than respectable, 
ability, have gone into it because they have passed 
under a cloud, because they have lost an election, or 
been unsuccessful in an office, or come into collision 
or rivalry with a colleague, or because a prime minister 
wdshed to moderate or to muzzle them, or because he 
desired to make room in his Cabinet for younger. 



' Thus, McCulloch, ^vriting in single exception of Sir Robert 

1816, says : ' There can be no Peel, have lavished peerages 

doubt that the prerogative of with a profusion that has been 

creating peers has been far too injurious alike to the dignity 

liberally exercised, not to say and legitimate influence of tlie 

abused, since the Revolution, peers and to the independence 

and more especially since the of the Commons (McCulloch's 

accession of George III. Mr. Account of the British Emjjire : 

Pitt, and the ministers by whom ' House of Lords '). 
he has been followed, with, the 



CH. IV. MODERN CREATIONS 427 

stronger, or more popular men. A few recruits, who 
would have done honour to any assembly, have been 
drawn from diplomacy, from the army and navy, from 
the permanent offices, or from those great fields of 
Indian administration in which so much of the strong- 
est character and most masculine intellect of our gene- 
ration is formed. Kinds of eminence that lie outside 
the circle of Government employment and the legal 
profession have been slightly touched. A great histo- 
rian, who had been an active Whig politician, and who 
supported his party powerfully both by his voice and 
his pen, and a great novelist who had been for many 
years a conspicuous Tory member of Parliament, were 
raised to the lowest grade in the peerage ; and the same 
dignity has been, more recently, conferred on one 
writer, who (if we except his almost honorary Govern- 
ment post of Laureate) had no special claim beyond 
the fact that, for at least forty years, he was universally 
recognised as one of the very greatest of living English- 
men, the foremost poet of his own country, and, with 
perhaps one exception, the foremost poet then living 
in the world. But the bulk of the accessions to the 
peerage come from other quarters. Great wealth, even 
though it be accompanied by no kind of real distinc- 
tion, especially if it be united with a steady vote in the 
House of Commons, has been the strongest claim ; and, 
next to wealth, great connections. Probably a large 
majority of those who have of late years risen to the 
peerage are men whose names conveyed no idea of any 
kind to the great body of the English people. 

It can scarcely be questioned that an infusion into 
the aristocracy of a certain number of rich merchant- 
princes is an advantage. They represent a distinct 
and important element in English life, and carry with 
them great influence and capacity. It should not be 



428 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

forgotten that the most enduring aristocratic Govern- 
ment that the modern world has known was that of 
Venice, the work of a landless and mercantile aristo- 
cracy. It is as little doubtful that the immense place 
given to undistinguished wealth in the modern peerage 
has contributed to lower its character. The existence 
of a -peersbge has been always defended, among other 
reasons, on the ground that it furnishes a reward for 
great achievements ; and British Governments under- 
take, though in a fitful and casual way, to distribute 
State honours for many kinds of eminence. Perhaps 
it would be better if they did not do so ; but, if they 
attempt to measure kinds of eminence that are not 
political, they should, at least, do so in a way that 
bears some relation to the true value of things. An 
Upper House depends much more than an elective As- 
sembly on the 23ersonal weight and brilliancy of its 
members, and perhaps the only kind of Upper House 
that is likely in the long run to form some real 
counterpoise to a democratic Assembly is one which in- 
cludes a large proportion of a nation^s greatest men, 
representing supreme and acknowledged achievement 
in many fields. 

The House of Lords represents much, but it cer- 
tainly does not represent this. If we ask what England 
in the present century has contributed of most value 
to the progress of the world, competent judges would 
probably give a foremost place to physical science. In 
no other period of the world^s history have the disco- 
veries in these fields been so numerous, so majestic, or 
so fruitful. In no other period has so large a propor- 
tion of the highest intellect taken this direction. In 
no other department have English achievements, by the 
acknowledgment of the whole scientific world, been so 
splendid. There is, I believe, only a single very recent 



CH. IV. REWARDS OF GENIUS 429 

example of purely scientific eminence being recognised 
by a peerage. 

Closely akin to science^ and perhaps even more im- 
portant among the elements of national well-being, are 
the great healing professions. Here, too, our century 
ranks among the most illustrious in the history of the 
world. It has seen the discovery of anaesthetics, which 
is one of the greatest boons that have ever been be- 
stowed upon suffering humanity. It has produced the 
germ theory of disease ; tlie antisejDtic treatment in 
surgery ; a method of removing ovarian tumours wliich 
has successfully combated one of the most terrible and 
most deadly of diseases ; a method of brain surgery 
which has already achieved much, and which promises 
inestimable progress in the future. It has vastly ex- 
tended our kn-owledge of disease by the invention of 
the stethoscope, the clinical thermometer, the laryngo- 
scope, the ophthalmoscope, and in many other ways 
which it is not here necessary to enumerate. England 
may justly claim a foremost place in this noble work/ 
and many of her finest intellects have been enlisted in 
its service. In no single instance has this kind of emi- 
nence been recognised by a peerage. It is clearly un- 
derstood that another and lower dignity is the stamp 
of honour which the State accords to the very highest 
eminence in medicine and surgery — as if to show in the 
clearest light how inferior in its eyes are tlie professions 
which do most to mitigate the great sum of human 
agony, to the professions which talk and quarrel and kill. 

Art forms another important element in the full 
development of national life. In this field, it is true, 



' An excellent sketch of Eng- Dr. Brudenell Carter on Medi- 
lish achievements in this field cine and Surgery in Ward's 
will be found in the essay by Reign of Queen Vicio7'ia. 



430 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. iy. 

England cannot claim any place at all comparable to 
that which she has won in science^ or in the healing 
professions ; but if measured, not by a doubtful com- 
parison of three or four of the greatest names, but by 
the number of men of undoubted genius who have ap- 
peared in a single generation, English art has never, I 
believe, ranked so high as at present, and never com- 
pared so favourably with the art of other nations. In 
1896, for the first time, a peerage was conferred on an 
English artist. The doors of the Upper House were 
never opened to the men who, in this century, have ren- 
dered the greatest services to the State and to humanity 
— to Simpson, whose discovery of chloroform has pre- 
vented an amount of human suffering which it would 
need the imagination of a Dante to realise ; to Stephen- 
son, whose engineering genius has done more than that 
of any other man to revolutionise the whole economical 
and industrial condition of England ; to Chadwick, the 
father of that great movement of sanitary reform which 
has already saved more human lives than any, except, 
perhaps, the very greatest, conquerors have destroyed ; 
to Darwin, who has transformed our conceptions of the 
universe and whose influence is felt to the farthest 
frontiers of speculative thought. For their own sakes 
it is not to be regretted that the claims of such men 
were not thrown into humiliating competition with 
those of the acute lawyers and politicians, the great 
country gentlemen and the opulent brewers, who throng 
the approaches to the Up2:)er House ; but if such a House 
is to continue, and, in a democratic age, is to retain its 
weight and influence in the State, it is not likely that 
elements of this kind can for ever be neglected. 

The position of an hereditary Chamber in a demo- 
cratic age is a problem of much difficulty and obscurity. 
I liave traced in a former chapter the force and the 



CH. IV. CONSERVATISM OF THE PEERAGE 431 

danger of the current wliicli is making all parts of the 
political machiner}^ of a piece, breaking down all the 
inequalities, diyersities of tendency, counterbalancing 
and restraining influences, on which the true liberty 
and the lasting security of nations so largely depends. 
Such a .movement is naturally inimical to the heredi- 
tary princi23le in legislation, and the danger has been in- 
tensified by the enormous increase during the last few 
years in the political difference between the House of 
Lords and one of the great parties in the State. This 
fact is especially significant as about two-thirds of the 
numerous creations that have been made in the present 
reign have been made by Liberal Governments, while 
an appreciable number of the earlier peerages consist of 
members of those great Whig houses which liave been 
the oldest and steadiest supporters of civil and religious 
liberty. It is true, as I have said, that an Upper House 
is naturally a moderating, restraining, and retarding 
body, rather than an impelling one ; that the bias of 
an hereditary class is naturally on the side of habit and 
tradition ; and that a very opulent class is inevitably 
conservative in questions relating to property. But 
these considerations are far from accounting for the full 
measure of the change that has taken place. Till the 
death of Lord Palmerston there was no great or steady 
party preponderance in the House of Lords. It grew 
up mainly under the policy of Mr. Grladstone ; but it 
only acquired its overwhelming magnitude when that 
statesman announced his determination to place the 
government of Ireland in the hands of the party which 
he had shortly before described as aiming at public 
plunder and the dismemberment of the Empire. The 
great body of the Liberal peers refused to follow him, 
and although he had himself, in his different minis- 
tries, created about eighty peerages, his followers in the 



432 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

House of Lords soon dwindled into little more than a 
small number of habitual office-holders.' 

The disproportion was very great ; but it must be 
acknowledged that it would have been impossible 
to form, by any fair means, an Upper Chamber consist- 
ing of men of large property and considerable and in- 
dependent positions, in which opinions hostile to Irish 
Home Eule did not greatly preponderate. It must also 
be added, that the elections of 1886 and 1895 have 
shown beyond all possibility of doubt that, on the Home 
Rule question, the House of Lords represented the true 
sentiments of the democracy of the country. 

And certainly the very remarkable parliamentary 
history of England from 1892 to 1895 does not weaken 
the conclusion. It appears that, under our present 
conditions, some desire for a change of representation 
and Government at every election acts with an almost 
tidal regularity on the constituencies, though the 
strength or w^eakness of the revulsion de|)ends upon the 
policy of the rival parties. In the election of 1892, 
and after a Conservative Government which had lasted 
for more than six years, the Home Eule party obtained 
a small and precarious majority of forty votes. In 
England, and especially in the great towns of England, 
it was utterly defeated ; in Great Britain as a whole 
it was in a minority ; but the skilful organisation and 
large over-representation of the Irish peasantry, and 
the strength of the Church disestablishment party in 
Wales, turned the balance, and a Government was 
formed depending for its support on a small majority, 
consisting of a number of discordant factions. The 



' In his speech on the reform Rule peers at about thirty, or 

of the House of Lords, March about 5 per cent, of the House 

19, 1888, Lord Rosebery esti- of Lords, 
mated the number of the Home 



CH. IV. THE PARLIAMENT OF 1892-1895 433 

remarkable House of Commons that sat in those years 
passed a Bill placing the government of Ireland in the 
hands of a separate Parliament, at the same time leav- 
ing a powerful contingent of eighty Irish members in 
the Parliament at Westminster ; it passed a vote in fa- 
vour of the establishment of a separate Parliament in 
Scotland ; it passed another vote in favour of breaking 
up the British Isles into a federation, with a number 
of distinct legislatures. It carried by a small majority, 
though it afterwards rescinded, an amendment to the 
Address, in March 1894, praying her Majesty ' that the 
power now enjoyed by persons not elected to Parliament 
by the possessors of the parliamentary franchise to pre- 
vent Bills being submitted to your Majesty for your 
Royal approval shall cease,'' and expressing a hope that 
' if it be necessary your Majesty will, with and by the 
advice of your responsible ministers, use the powers 
vested in your Majesty to secure the passing of this 
much-needed reform/ 

The members of the Government clearly saw that it 
was impossible to carry Home Rule by a direct appeal 
to the nation. When the Home Rule Bill, which was 
a capital portion of their policy, was rejected by an 
overwhelming majority in the Lords, they did not ven- 
ture to dissolve upon the question, and submit it to 
the adjudication of the constituencies. They hoped to 
secure a Home Rule majority on other grounds, by 
creating and stimulating an agitation against the House 
of Lords. The last speech delivered in Parliament by 
Mr. Gladstone was truly described by Mr. Balfour as 
' ?i> declaration of war against the House of Lords. ^ 
This and the Home Rule policy were the two legacies 
which the retiring statesman bequeathed to his party. 

As early as 1888 no less than seven members who 
afterwards sat in the Radical Cabinet of 1892, voted in 
VOL. I. 28 



434 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

favour of a resolution of Mr. Labouchere stating ' that, 
in the opinion of this House, it is contrary to the true 
principles of representative government, and injurious 
to their efficacy, that any person should be a member 
of one House of the Legislature by right of birth, and 
it is therefore desirable to put an end to any such ex- 
isting rights/^ It is not surprising that such men 
should have eagerly taken up the war against the 
House of Lords, and Cabinet ministers took the fore- 
most part in leading the assault. The policy of ' filling 
the cup ^ was openly avowed, and it meant that measure 
after measure was to be introduced which was believed 
to be popular, in order that the House of Lords might 
reject them, and might in this way be discredited with 
the electors. It was hoped that by such a policy the 
tide of democratic feeling would rise with irresistible 
force against the hereditary House. Mr. Morley rarely 
made a speech on the j)latform without denouncing the 
hereditary legislators. Mr. Shaw Lefevre informed his 
constituents that ^ the wisest course at the moment is 
to reduce still further the power of the Lords, by de- 
priving them of the power of veto,^ thus reducing them 
to an absolutely impotent body, with no power of even 
retarding legislation. Sir William Harcourt declared 
^ that a majority of a single vote in the House of Com- 
mons is a more accurate representation of the popular 
will than a majority of four hundred in the House of 
Lords. ^^ 

Other ministers, and their supporters in Parliament, 
followed suit, and outside the House Kadical organisa- 
tions and Radical speakers and writers vied with one 
another in the violence of their denunciations, in their 



* See Charley, The Crusade against the Constitution^ pp. 514-16. 
2 Ibid. pp. 437, 462. 



CH. IV. AN ABORTIVE CRUSADE 435 

contemptuous or arrogant predictions that the heredi- 
tary principle had had its day. Catalogues of the pre- 
tended misdeeds of the House of Lords during the last 
fifty years were drawn up, without the slightest inti- 
mation that it had ever fulfilled any one useful purpose. 
One of the most malevolent and grossly partial of these 
works was widely circulated with the warm recom- 
mendation of Mr. Gladstone. Another popular Eadical 
writer observed, in a highly jubilant strain, that at the 
election of 1892 the country had given a clear mandate 
to the House of Commons to enact a Home Rule mea- 
sure ; that this was pre-eminently ' one of the Acts 
upon which a great and serious people never go back ' ; 
and that the House of Lords was nothing more than a 
farce and a nuisance, which must be speedily crushed. 
He graciously added that its opposition might be over- 
come by raising 500 sweeps to the peerage. ^ 

There were signs however, that all was not moving 
as the leaders of this party desired. It was a curious 
and significant fact that, on the retirement of Mr. 
Gladstone, the party found it necessary or expedient, 
after much heartburning, to go to the House of Lords 
for their leader, putting aside the claims of their leader 
in the Commons. Under the new system of local go- 
vernment a vast multitude of elections were taking 
place on an exceedingly democratic basis, and, to atten- 
tive observers, no feature of these elections Avas more 
remarkable than the extraordinary popularity of peers 
as candidates, even in places where they had no special 
local interests. It is only necessary to look through 
the elections of the London County Council to recog- 
nise this fact. It was evident, too, that the attempt to 



^ Mr. Frederic Harrison, ' Hoav to Drive Home Rule Home 

{FortnigMly Review^ September, 1892). 



486 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

create a popular agitation against the Lords was prov- 
ing very impotent. Neither Great Britain, nor, indeed, 
Ireland, showed the smallest indignation because the 
House of Lords had rejected the Irish Home Kule Bill, 
and because it had refused to consent to the scheme 
for restoring, at the cost of a large sum of public 
money, the tenants who had been evicted because they 
had joined the conspiracy called ' the Plan of Cam- 
paign." N"or were the ministers more successful in 
their attempts to persuade the working-men that the 
House of Lords had injured them because it had intro- 
duced into the Employers' Liability Bill an amendment 
providing that, if any body of workmen expressed by 
a clear two-thirds vote their desire to make their own 
insurance arrangements with their employers, and to 
contract themselves out of the Bill, they should be 
allowed to do as they wished. Divisions multiplied ; 
bye-elections were unfavourable, and at last, after a 
feeble life of three years, the Government fell, and the 
inevitable dissolution speedily followed. On the eve 
of the election Lord Eosebery clearly and emphatically 
told the country that the real and supreme question at 
issue was the House of Lords, and that Home Rule and 
all the other government measures were involved in the 
destruction of what he somewhat absurdly called its 
'legislative preponderance." 

The country had now the opportunity of expressing 
its opinion about these men, their objects, and their 
methods, and it gave an answer which no sophistry 
could disguise and no stupidity could misunderstand. 
The complete, crushing, and unequivocal defeat of the 
Radical party in 1895 is certainly one of the most me- 
morable events in the present generation. No circum- 
stance of humiliation was wanting. The majority against 
the late Government was greater than any which had 



CH. IV. THE GENERAL ELECTION OF 1895 437' 

been seen in England since the election of 1832. In 
addition to several less important members of that 
Government, four Cabinet ministers, including those 
whose attacks on the House of Lords I have quoted, 
were defeated at the poll. In nearly every portion of 
the Kingdom, and in town and country alike, the ver- 
dict was the same. In constituencies where the mem- 
bers of the party escaped disaster they usually did so 
by a greatly decreased vote. But most conspicuous of 
all was the emphatic condemnation of the New Liberal- 
ism, not only in London, but also in the overwhelming 
majority of the great provincial towns, where indus- 
trial life is most intense, where vast masses of working- 
men are agglomerated, and where the older Liberalism 
had found its strongest and most enthusiastic support. 

The lesson was a salutary one, and it is not likely to 
be forgotten. It proved beyond dispute, what many 
had begun to doubt — the profound conservatism of the 
great masses of the English people, and their genuine 
attachment to the institutions of their country. It 
showed clearly which section of the Liberal party in 
the great Home Eule schism most truly reflected the 
sentiments and the conviction of the nation. It showed 
how enormously men had overrated the importance of 
the noisy groups of Socialists, faddists, and revolution- 
ists that float upon the surface of English political 
thought like froth-flakes on a deep and silent sea. It 
showed, also, not less clearly how entirely alien to Eng- 
lish feeling was the log-rolling strategy which had of 
late been growing so rapidly in English politics. 

It would be uncandid and untrue to represent this 
election as having turned solely on the question of the 
House of Lords. As is always the case, many differ- 
ent elements conspired to the result, and among them 
must be included that periodical tidal movement to 



438 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

whicli I have already referred. At the same time, the 
qaestiou of the Upper House was in the very fore- 
ground of the battle, and was as directly at issue as it 
is ever likely to be in England, unless she should 
adopt the system of a Keferendum. The result of the 
election clearly showed that the House of Lords had 
represented the opinion of the nation much more truly 
than the House of Commons between 1892 and 1895 ; 
that the country had no wish to overthrow it, or to de- 
stroy its power, or to extirpate its hereditary element, 
and that, as long as its members discharge their duty 
faithfully, fearlessly, and moderately, they are not likely 
to want popular support. 

At the same time, there could be no greater error 
than to infer from the triumph of 1895 that there is 
no need of any change or reform in the Upper House, 
widening its basis, increasing its strength and its re- 
presentative character. With the overwhelming power 
that is now placed in the hands of the House of Com- 
mons ; with the liability of that House to great and 
sudden fluctuations ; with the dangerous influence 
which, in certain conditions of politics, small groups, 
or side-issues, or personal dissensions or incapacities, 
may exercise on the course of its decisions ; with the 
manifest decay of the moderate and moderating ele- 
ments in one of the great parties of the State, and 
with a Constitution that provides none of the special 
safeguards against sudden and inconsiderate organic 
change that are found in America and in nearly all 
Continental countries, the existence of a strong Upper 
Chamber is a matter of the first necessity. It is 
probable that the continuance, without a great cata- 
strophe, of democratic government depends mainly 
upon the possibility of organising such a Chamber, re- 
presenting the great social and industrial interests in 



CH. IV. THE ROMAN SENATE 439 

the country, and sufficiently powerful to avert the 
evils that must, sooner or later, follow from the un- 
bridled power of a purely democratic House of Com- 
mons. There is no question in politics of a more 
serious interest than the elements from which such a 
body should be composed. 

A brief glance at the constitutions of some other 
countries may here be instructive. The most illustri- 
ous of all examples of a great controlling, aristocratic 
assembly is the Senate of ancient Kome, a body which 
existed for no less than 1,300 years, and which, at 
least during the period of the Republic, contributed 
more than any other to mould the fortunes and the 
character of the only State which both achieved and 
long maintained supreme power in the world. Like 
the House of Lords, it was at once a legislative and 
a judicial body, though its legislative functions were 
confined to sanctioning laws which had been voted by 
the people, and were, as time went on, greatly im- 
paired. It had, however, the right of imposing and 
applying taxes. It had complete authority over fo- 
reign policy, over the administration of the provinces, 
and over the conduct of war. It watched, as a supreme 
body, over the security of the State, and had even a 
right in time of great danger to suspend the laws and 
confer absolute powers on the consuls. Though it was 
essentially a patrician body, it was not, until a late 
period of the Empire, an hereditary body. One order 
of magistrates possessed as such the right of entering 
into it ; the bulk of the senators were chosen for life, 
first by the consuls, and afterwards by the censors, but 
chosen only out of particular classes. In the earlier 
period they were exclusively patricians ; but they were 
afterwards chosen from those who held magisterial 
functions, and, as the magistrates were elected by the 



440 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

whole people, though by a very unequal suffrage^ the 
democratic influence thus obtained a real^ though in- 
direct, influence in the Senate. 

During the last days of the Eepublic, and under the 
Empire, the Senate went through other phases^ which 
it is not necessary for us to follow. Though greatly 
changed and greatly lowered, it suryived every other 
element of Roman freedom, and even after the estab- 
lishment of the Byzantine Empire and amid the anar- 
chy of the barbaric invasions it j^layed no small part 
in Roman history. It is here sufficient to notice that 
in the days of its vigour and greatness it was neither 
an elective nor an hereditary body, though both elec- 
tion and heredity had some influence over its compo- 
sition ; and that, next to its own wisdom, it owed its 
power chiefly to the number and importance of the 
great functions that were conflded to it. ^ 

If we pass over the great chasm which separates the 
Roman Republic from our modern day, we shall find 
little difference of opinion, among competent judges, 
that the American Senate is the Upper Chamber, out 
of England, which has hitherto ranked the highest. 
Until very recent days all critics of the American Con- 
stitution would have agreed with Story, that the Senate 
is not only ' a most important and valuable part of the 
system,' but is even ' the real balance-wheel, which ad- 
justs and regulates its movements. ^'^ A few discordant 
voices have of late been heard, but as a work of con- 
structive and prescient statesmanship it unquestion- 



' See Merivale's Hist, of sen and Gil)bon, and, on its 

Rorae^ iv. 9-14 ; Bluntschli, Be later history, Gregorovius. Hist. 

VEtat., pp. 384-85; Laveleye, of Rome in tlie Middle Ages. 
G Oliver nement dans la Demo- 2 Commentaries on the Con- 

cratie., ii. 10-22. See, too, the stitution of the United States, 

notices of the Senate iu ]\Iomm- ii. 182. 



CH. IV. THE AMERICAN SENATE 441 

ably ranks very higli^ though one of its most important 
characteristics is less due to deliberate foresight than to 
an inevitable compromise. The smaller States refused 
to join in the federation unless they obtained^ in at 
least one House, the security of an equal vote, and were 
thus guaranteed against the danger of absorption by 
their larger colleagues. In the Continental Congress, 
which first met in 1774, it had been agreed that each 
State should, in voting, count for only one ; and this 
system was afterwards adopted in the Senate, with one 
slight modification. In the Continental Congress the 
vote had been by States. In the Senate each State was 
represented by two members, but they voted as indi- 
viduals, and might, therefore, take different sides. 

By this process a powerful counterpoise was estab- 
lished to the empire of mere numbers which prevailed 
in the Lower House. Two members represented the 
smallest as well as the largest State, and they were 
chosen, not by a directly popular vote, but by the 
State legislatures, which, like the Federal Legislature 
consisted of two Houses.^ 

The next question that arose was the length of time 
during which the senators should hold their office. 
Montesquieu had maintained that a senator ought to 
be chosen for life, as was the custom in Rome and in 
the Greek republics. Alexander Hamilton, the fore- 
most political thinker of America, and probably Jay, 
desired to adopt this system ; ^ but it was ultimately 
agreed to adopt a limited period, considerably longer 
than that which was assigned to the members of the 
House of Eepresentatives. In this latter House the 
term of office is only two years. In the Senate it is 



1 For the method of election, 

see pp. 69, 70, of this volume. Hamilton's Wo'ls, i. 334. 



442 DEMOCRACY AXD LIBERTY ch. iv. 

six years ; one-tliird of the Senate being renewed every 
two years by the State legislatures. The Senate is 
thus a permanent body subject to frequent modifica- 
tions. It was the object of its framers to combine a con- 
siderable measure of that continuity of policy which 
should be one of the first ends of a legislator with 
close and constant contact with State opinion ; to place 
the Senate above the violent impulses^ the transient 
passions, the dangerous fluctuations of uninstructed 
masses, but not above the genuine and steady currents 
of national feeling. Tlie qualifications of a senator 
were also different from those of the members of the 
other House. He must have been a citizen for nine 
years, whereas in the other House seven years only 
were required. He must be at least thirty years old, 
wliile the members of the Lower House need only be 
twenty-five. The age of thirty was probably adopted 
in imitation of the Roman Senate. 

The body, representing only the States, is a very 
small one. It at first consisted of twenty-six members, 
and with the multi^Dlication of States has gradually 
risen to ninety.' As might be expected from the 
manner of election, nearly all its members are experi- 
enced politicians, who have sat in the State legislatures 
or the House of Representatives, or have held high 
official posts, and i]i intellect, character and influence 
they rise considerably above the average of American 
public men. The Senate is presided over by the Vice- 
President of the United States, who, however, is not 
chosen by it. and who has no vote in it, excejDt in the 
event of equal division. As a legislative body it has 
the same powers as the other House, except that it can- 
not originate money Bills, though it may both alter 



Inchidincr the senators for the nevr State of Utah. 



cri. IV. THE AMERICAN SENATE 443 

and reject them. It is not^ like the House of Lords, 
the supreme court of appeal^ but public men accused 
of violations of public trusts and duties may be im- 
peached before it by the House of Eepreseutatives. 
Its position in this respect resembles, but not exactly, 
that of the British House of Lords. In America, two- 
thirds of the members present must concur for a con- 
viction ; the senators in cases of impeachment vote on 
oath, or on affirmation, and not, like English peers, on 
their honour ; their sentence does not extend further 
than a removal from office and a disqualification from 
holding office, and it leaves the convicted persons still 
liable to indictment and punishment according to law. 
If the person impeached is the President of the 
United States, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court 
presides over the Senate, as the Vice-President would 
have a personal interest in the issue. It must be added 
that impeachment has long been obsolete in England, 
but is still sometimes employed in the United States. 
Subject to the limits and conditions which the Ameri- 
can Constitution lays down, it is a valuable and much- 
needed restraint upon corruption. 

But the most distinctive feature of the American 
Senate is its large share in what in most countries 
would be considered the functions of the Executive. 
In foreign policy it exercises a commanding and most 
salutary influence. The American Constitution has 
carefully provided against the passion for organic 
change which is natural to democracy ; but it was 
more difficult to provide against the extreme dangers 
that may ensue when foreign policy falls into the 
hands of demagogues, is treated as a mere shuttlecock 
of party, and conducted with a view to winning votes. 
The United States have certainly not escaped this evil. 
In few other countries has the language of public men. 



444 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

even in responsible positions^ been more freqnentl}^ 
insulting to other nations^, and especially to Great 
Britain, on occasions Avlien by such means some class 
of electors might be won. If America had been a 
European Continental power, surrounded by great 
military empires, the attitude of her public men, and 
even of her legislative bodies, towards other nations 
and their affairs would have drawn her into many wars. 
Fortunately for her, she escapes by her situation the 
chief dangers and complications of foreign policy. In 
England, at least, the motives that inspire the lan- 
guage of her public men whenever an election is im- 
pending are now well understood, and foreign affairs, 
before they reach the stage when words are translated 
into acts, pass into a calmer and wiser atmosphere. 
Xo treaty with a foreign Power can be contracted, and 
no ambassador or other negotiator can be appointed, 
without the assent of the Senate, and the whole sub- 
ject of foreign policy is therefore brought under the 
supervision of the standing committee of that body. 

Like the English Cabinet, it on these occasions de- 
liberates and decides in secret. It is, indeed, one of 
the most remarkable characteristics of the American 
democracy, how much of its working is withdrawn 
from the public eye. As I have already mentioned, 
in the earlier period of its history the sittings of the 
Senate vrere altogether secret,' and the rule of secrecy 
still prevails in its ^executive sessious,^ though, on a 
demand of a fifth of the members present, the votes of 
the members may be published. On the whole, this 
arrangement does much to secure a true, thorough, 
and impartial examination of foreign policy, free from 
the clap-trap and popularity hunting that too often 



1 Bryce, i. 149. 



CH. IV. THE AMERICAN SENATE 445 

accompany public discussion, and the corruption and 
intrigue that usually follow complete secrecy. 

In the last place, the Senate has a great part, in 
concarrence with the President, in distributing the 
patronage of the State. It is the President, indeed, 
and the President alone, who selects, but the consent 
of the Senate is required to the appointment. This 
applies not only to the diplomatic and great executive 
appointments, but also to the appointment of the 
judges of the Supreme Court. Until 1867 the assent 
of the Senate was only required to appointments, but 
not to removals ; but a law of that year restricted the 
sole power of the President to that of suspending an 
official when Congress is not in session.^ 

Such, in its general outlines, is this illustrious body, 
which plays so important a part in American history, 
and has excited the envy and admiration of many 
European statesmen and writers on politics. Its merits 
are great and manifest, though there has been of late 
some tendency to believe that they have been exagge- 
rated, and although it is, unfortunately, but too clear 
that they have not been wholly retained. The sketch 
Avhich I have drawn in a former chapter of the later 
course of American politics sufficiently proves it, and 
sufficiently indicates the cause. The excellent system 
of indirect and double election, which the framers of 
the Constitution considered the best way of freeing 
democracy from its baser and more foolish elements, 
has not been able to withstand the pressure and the 
ingenuity of caucuses and managers. The men who 
are entrusted with the task of voting for the President 
have long since been deprived by their electors of all 
liberty of choice, and are strictly pledged to vote for 



Ford's American Citizen's Manual^ p. 13. 



446 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

particular candidates. In the election of senators a 
similar process lias gradually, though more imperfectly, 
prevailed. The State legislatures are essentially the 
creatures of the caucus, and the members are pledged 
when elected to vote for particular candidates for the 
Senate. The system of the equality of the States has 
been very valuable in counteracting one great danger 
of democracy, but it introduced a danger of another 
kind. The desire of the free and slave sections of the 
country to multiply States of their own complexion, in 
order to acquire or maintain a preponderance in the 
Senate, was one main cause of the great Civil War. 
The Senators are usually the most prominent states- 
men of legislatures that are often exceedingly corrupt, 
and the stream which springs from a tainted fountain 
cannot be wholly pure. In spite of their small num- 
ber and their careful selection, the members of the 
American Senate have not been free from the taint or 
suspicion of personal corruption.^ 

Though in some respects greatly superior to the 
British House of Lords as an Upper Chamber, the 
Senate ranks in this respect clearly below it, and be- 
low most of the Upper Houses in Europe. One of 
the worst results of democracy, and especially one of the 
worst results of the influence of American example 
upon politics, is the tendency which it produces to 
overrate the importance of machinery, and to under- 
rate the importance of character in public life. It 
is not surprising that it should be so, for the American 
Constitution is, jDrobably, the best example which his- 
tory affords of wise political machinery. Nor are the 
great men who formed it to be blamed if their succes- 



' See the admirable pages on the Senate in Mr. Bryce's Amer- 
ican Commonwealth. 



CH, IV. THE AMERICAN SENATE 447 

sors, by too lax laws of naturalisation and by breaking 
down all the old restrictions and qualifications of race, 
colour, and property, have degraded the electorate, 
and in some serious respects impaired the working of 
the Constitution. To me, at least, it seems more than 
doubtful whether there is any political advantage 
which is not too dearly bought if it leads to a perma- 
nent lowering of the character of public men and of 
the moral tone of public life. In the long run, the 
increasing or diminishing importance of character in 
public life is perhaps the best test of the progress or 
decline of nations. It is an ominous sign for a nation 
when its governors and legislators are corrupt, but it 
is a still worse .sign when public opinion has come to 
acquiesce placidly in their corruption. 

On the whole, however, the influence of the Ameri- 
can Senate has been eminently for good ; but careful 
observers believe that it has become more subservient 
than it once was to the corrupt party influences that 
sway American politics. Its veto upon public appoint- 
ments has been, I believe, of great advantage, but it 
has not always been exercised as it ought. There is 
no diplomatic service in the world which has included 
men of higher abilities or purer characters than tliat 
of America ; but there is also, I suppose, no other civi- 
lised nation where it would be possible for a Govern- 
ment, for the purpose of ingratiating itself with a 
particular class of voters, to select as their national 
representative in a foreign country a man of another 
nation who had recently fled from justice under the 
gravest of imputations. The lines with which, not 
long since, one of the best English observers, and one 
of the most sincere English admirers of American in- 
stitutions, sums up his impressions of the Senate are 
not encouraging. ' So far as a stranger can judge,^ 



448 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY cii. iv. 

writes Mr. Bryce^ ' there is certainly less respect for 
the Senate collectively^ and for most of the senators 
individually, now than there was eighteen years ago, 
though, of course, there are among its members men 
of an ability and character which would do honour to 
any Assembly/^ 

I have dwelt at some length upon the Constitution 
of the American Senate, as it is, on the whole, the 
most remarkable of all modern instances of a successful 
Upper Chamber not based on the hereditary principle. 
It is, however, evident that much which is distinctive 
in it, and which, has contributed most to its peculiar 
importance, is so alien to English ideas that it could 
not be reproduced. It is hardly within the range of 
possibility that the foreign policy of England and the 
administration of the chief patronage of the Crown 
should be placed under the direct control and supervi- 
sion of an Upper Chamber sitting and deciding in 
secret, nor are there any abuses in these departments 
sufficiently grave to require so great a change. 

It will not be necessary to bestow more than a cur- 
sory glance on a few typical examples of the Senates, 
or Up2:>er Houses, of European countries.^ In the 
French Republic, by the constitutional law of 1875, 
the Senate consisted of 300 members, of whom seventy- 
five were elected for life by the two Houses combined, 
and afterwards, as vacancies occurred, by the Senate 
itself, while 225 were elected for nine years by the de- 



^ Bryce's American Common- works, and is, of course, pub- 

wealth, i. IGl. lished separately. The reader 

^ Full particulars of these con- may also consult Desplaces, 

stitutions will be found in the Senats et Chambres JIautes, 

Avorks of Dareste and Deniom- 1808 ; Morizot-Thibault, Droits 

brynes, which I have already des Chambres Hautes en matiere 

quoted. The revised Belgian de Finances^ 1891. 
Constitution is later than these 



CH. IV. THE BUNDESRATH 449 

partments and the colonies. In the case of this lat- 
ter class the American system of indirect election is 
adopted, delegates from the municipal councils and a 
certain number of official personages being the electors. 
A third part of this portion of the Senate is renewed 
every third year, and this system of partial renewal is 
largely adopted in European Senates. It will be found 
in those of Spain, Belgium, the Netherlands, Denmark, 
and Eoumania, though the periods and proportions of 
renewal are somewhat varied. In France, as in Den- 
mark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland, the senators 
receive a small payment like the members of the Cham- 
ber of Deputies. The French Senate can be converted 
into a court of justice for the trial of political offences. 
It possesses the same legislative powers as the Lower 
Chamber, except tliat it cannot originate money Bills ; 
and it has one special prerogative — that the President 
can only dissolve the Chamber of Deputies with its 
consent. By a law of 1884 an important change was 
introduced into its composition. The life peers were 
not removed, but it was enacted that no more should 
be created, and that all vacancies in this class should 
be filled up, in the usual manner, by departmental 
election. The whole body will thus spring from the 
same elective source. 

In the German Empire, the Bundesrath, or Federal 
Council, is so unlike the usual type of Upper Cham- 
bers that some writers hesitate to include it in that 
category. It bears, indeed, in some respects a strong 
resemblance to a privy council or a council of minis- 
ters. It consists of fifty-eight members, appointed by 
the governments of the different States in the German 
Empire. In this representation, however, the Ameri- 
can system of giving equal weight to all States has not 
been adopted. The States are represented according 



450 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

to tlieir importance, Prussia having seventeen voices. 
The Chancellor of the Empire, who is himself chosen 
by the Emperor, presides, and it is provided that the 
presidence can only be in the hands of a representative 
of Prussia or of Bavaria. 

The powers of this body are very extensive and very 
various. N"o measure can become a law of the Em- 
pire, no treaty relating to the common affairs of the 
EnijDire can become valid without its consent. No 
change in the Constitution of the Empire can be effect- 
ed if fourteen members of the Federal Council oppose 
it. Its members have a right to appeal and speak in the 
Eeichstag, though they cannot be members of it. It 
proposes measures which are to be brought before the 
Eeichstag, and new taxes are among the number, and 
it sends delegates into that body to support them. It 
has great administrative powers. It establishes from 
among its members permanent commissions to preside 
over the great departments of affairs which are com- 
mon to the Empire. On each of these commissions at 
least four States must be represented, besides the Em- 
peror ; and there are j)rovisions, which it is not here 
necessary to describe, for giving special privileges on 
special subjects or occasions to particular States. It 
has the right, with the consent of the Emperor, to dis- 
solve the Reichstag, and, except in the case of an at- 
tack on German territory, its assent is required for a 
declaration of war. It has the power of pronouncing 
that States in the Imperial Confederation have failed 
in fulfilling their federal obligation, and it can autho- 
rise the Emperor to coerce them. Differences between 
the members of the Confederation that are not provided 
for by the letter of the Constitution, or cannot be 
settled by legal tribunals, pass before the Federal 
Council, but it does not possess in these cases a coer- 



CH. IV. AUSTRIA 451 

cive authority. It has also some right of supervision 
over the administration of justice, especially in cases of 
socialistic or anarchical agitation. The power of the 
Emperor and the power of the Federal Council form 
together such a formidable weight in the German Em- 
pire that the real influence of the Reichstag has hither- 
to been much less than that of the popular House in 
most constitutional countries. 

The constitutions of the States that compose the 
German Empire are very various, and I will here only 
refer briefly to that of Prussia, which is the most im- 
portant. Its Upper House is composed of several dis- 
tinct classes. There are members by hereditary right. 
There are a small number who hold their seats by 
virtue of great posts which they occupy. There are 
members who are nominated for life absolutely by the 
King, or on the presentation of certain classes of great 
proprietors, of the universities, and of the principal 
towns. The whole body consists of rather more than 
300 members, and sixty must be present to form a 
House. The Prussian House of Lords can only accept or 
reject financial measures which are sent to it from the 
Lower House. It can neither originate nor alter them. 

The. Austrian Upper Chamber is framed on much 
the same composite principle as that of Prussia. In 
1895 it consisted of the princes of the Imperial Family 
who had attained their majority, sixty-eight hereditary 
members, seventeen Catholic prelates, and 131 mem- 
bers named for life.^ Delegations from Austria and 
Hungary, equal in numbers and elected in stated pro- 
portions from the two Houses of the two countries, 
sit alternately at Vienna and Buda-Pesth, and manage 
those imperial affairs which are common to both nations. 



Almanack de Gotha^ 1896, p. 716. 



452 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

In Italy the composition of the Senate is more sim- 
ple. With the exception of the princes of the royal 
family, it consists exclusively of members nominated 
for life by the King. 'No limit of numbers is imposed, 
but the limit of age is forty years, and the members 
have to be selected from eight categories. They are 
chosen from the clergy, from the great scientific acade- 
mies, from the Chamber of Deputies and provincial 
councils, from the high functionaries of the State, from 
the magistracy, the army, and the heads of families 
who pay the highest taxes, and, finally, from those who 
by their services or eminent merits have deserved well 
of their country. The Italian Senate has all the legis- 
lative powers of the Lower Chamber, with the excep- 
tion of the origination of taxes, and, like most other 
senates, it has the right of judging as a judicial body 
grave political offences. 

In Spain the Senate is composed of 360 members. 
Half of these are elected in different proportions by the 
clergy, the learned societies, the universities, the pro- 
vincial councils, and by delegates from the most-taxed 
commoners. These elected members are renewed by 
halves every five years, and the sovereign has also the 
right of dissolving this portion of the Senate. The 
other half are permanent, and sit for life. Some of 
them sit by their own right. To this category belong 
the chief grandees of Spain and a number of important 
functionaries in Church and State. The remainder 
are nominated for life by the Sovereign, and are chosen 
out of particular classes, much in the same way as in 
Italy. The powers of the Senate are substantially the 
same as in Italy. In Spain no measure can become 
law unless it has been voted for by a majority of all 
the members who constitute each Chamber. 

In Switzerland the American system is adopted of 



CH. IV. ITALY, SPAIN, AND SWITZERLAND 453 

having one Chamber, elected by the population in pro- 
portion to its numbers, while the other Chamber is 
elected by the different cantons, each canton being 
equally represented by two deputies. ^ The respective 
provinces of the Federal Government and of the go- 
vernments of the cantons are minutely traced by the 
Constitution, but the two Federal Assemblies have 
almost equal, though in some respects slightly differ- 
ing, powers, and, as I have already noticed, neither 
has any special privilege in matters of taxation. A 
curious feature of the Council of States is, that there 
is no uniformity in the election of its members and in 
the duration of their mandate. Each canton has a 
right to send two deputies, but it may determine for 
itself the mode of their election and the time for which 
they are to sit. Sometimes these deputies are chosen 
by the legislative bodies of the cantons, and sometimes 
by direct popular election, and they are generally clio- 
sen for either one year or three years. The two Cham- 
bers usually sit separately, but for some purposes they 
deliberate together, and in this case, in the event of a 
difference, the greatly superior numbers in the more 
popular House give it an overwhelming preponderance. 
The two Houses sitting together choose the seven mem- 
bers of the Federal Council, which is the executive 
Government of the Confederation, and they select, out 
of the seven members, the two who are to hold during 
the ensuing year the position of President and Vice- 
President of the Swiss Kepublic. The wdiole position 
of the legislative bodies in Switzerland is materially 
lowered by the Eeferendum, or power of appealing 
directly to a popular vote upon proposed measures. 



1 In some cases a canton has been split into two, and in these 
cases each half canton sends one member. 



454 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

which, as we have ah'eady seen, is the most remark- 
able feature in the Swiss Republic. 
- In the Netherlands the Upper Chamber is elected 
by the provincial States, and its members sit for nine 
years, with a partial renewal every three years. They 
must have a certain amount of property, which is mea- 
sured by the taxation they pay. By a singular, and, 
as it seems to me, most unwise provision, the Upper 
Chamber has no right either of initiating or of amend- 
ing laws, and it therefore cannot exercise that influence 
of modification or compromise which is the most valu- 
able function of most Upper Houses. Its sole power 
in legislation is to accept or reject in their totality the 
measures that have been voted by the other Chamber. 
It does not possess the power, which most Senates pos- 
sess, of trying ministers who are impeached by the 
Lower Chamber. This right of trial belongs to the 
Pligh Court of Justice ; but whenever there is a va- 
cancy in that court the Upper Chamber has the right 
of submitting to the King a list of five candidates, and 
the King is bound to nominate one of them. In the 
reform of the Constitution which took place in 1887, 
the number of members in the Upper Chamber was 
increased from thirty-nine to fifty, and that in the 
Lower House from eighty-six to 100. 

In Belgium, by the Constitution of 1831 the Senate 
was elected in a manner which is quite different from 
those I have hitherto described, and which is pro- 
nounced by the best Belgian writer on constitutions 
to be ^ detestable.'^ It was elected directly, and on 
the basis of mere numbers, by the same electors as the 
House of Eepresentatives. The principal differences 
between the two Houses were, that the Senate was only 



Laveleye, Le Gouve7'nement dans la Democratie^ ii. 455. 



CH. IV. THE NETHERLANDS AND BELGIUM 455 

half as large a body as the Chamber of Deputies ; that 
it was elected for eight instead of four years ; that its 
members were unpaid, and that they could only be 
selected from the larger taxpayers of the country. 
The Senate is renewed by halves every four years ; 
but the King has also the power of dissolving it, either 
separately, or conjointly with the other Chamber. It 
has the same legislative powers as the other House, 
except that financial measures and measures relating to 
the contingent of the army must be first voted by the 
Lower House. It has no judicial functions, these 
being reserved exclusively for the regular tribunals. 
By the Constitution of 1893 great changes have been 
made in the composition of the Senate, as well as of 
the Lower House. A number of senators equalling 
half the number of the members of the Chamber of 
Deputies are now directly elected by the voters in the 
provinces, in proportion to their population, and with 
the provision that the electors must be thirty years old. 
But, in addition to these, there is another class, chosen 
by the provincial councils, each council returning from 
two to four senators, according to the population of 
the province it represents. The first of these two 
classes of senators must be chosen from among citizens 
who pay a certain amount of direct taxation. For the 
second class no pecuniary qualification is required. The 
sons of the sovereign, or, if he has no sons, the Belgian 
princes who come next in the order of succession, are 
senators in their own right. 

The foregoing examples will be sufficient to illustrate 
the different manners in which the problem of providing 
an efficient Upper Chamber can be met. On the whole, 
these Chambers in the Continental constitutions have 
worked well, though they have in general not yet had 
a very long experience, and most of them — especially 



456 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

those of a composite character — have included a large 
proportion of the chief elements of weight and ability 
in their respective countries. In the colonial constitu- 
tions under the British CroAvn^ where resjDonsible Go- 
yernments have been established, the usual type has 
been one elective and popular Chamber and a smaller 
Chamber, consisting of members who are either nomi- 
nated for life directly by the Crown, or who sit by 
virtue of high offices to which they have been ap- 
pointed by the Crown, or, more frequently, of a com- 
bination of both classes. In some cases, however, 
election and nomination are mixed, and in others 
the Upper House is completely elective, but subject 
to a property qualification for the electors or members, 
or for both. There are no less than seventeen colonies 
under the British Crown with responsible Govern- 
ments. Many of them are so small that inferences 
drawn from them are scarcely applicable to a great 
country, but a few of the Senates of the larger colonies 
may be briefly sketched.^ 

Thus, in the Dominion Parliament of the great Ca- 
nadian confederation the Senate consists of eighty-one 
members, nominated for life by the Governor-General 
under the great seal of Canada, and selected in stated 
proportions from the different provinces in the con- 
federation. Each senator must be at least thirty years 
old. He must have property to the value of four thou- 
sand dollars and a residence in the province which he 
represents, and he receives a payment of one thousand 
dollars a year. Each province also has its own sepa- 
rate Parliament, but they are not all constructed on 
the same tyj^e. 



^ An excellent summary will Constitutions^ 1891. See, too, 
be found in a little work of Mr. Martin's Statesman' sYear-Book. 
Arthur jNIills, called Colonial 



CH. IV. COLONIAL SENATES 457 

In Newfoundland there is an extremely democratic 
constitution, for both the Legislative Council and the 
House of Assembly are elected by manhood suffrage, 
though a property qualification is retained for the 
members. 

In Africa, the Senate of the Cape of Good Hope 
consists of twenty-two members, elected for ten years, 
and presided over by the Chief Justice of the colony. 
There is a property qualification both for electors and 
members, and the members of both Houses are paid. 
Full responsible government in this colony only exists 
since 1872. The neighbouring colony of Natal was 
made a distinct colony in 1856. Its Legislative Coun- 
cil is formed of five official and two nominated mem- 
bers, together with twenty-three members who are 
elected for four years by electors possessing a certain 
property qualification. Vast territories lie outside these 
colonies, which are administered by commissioners ; 
while the West African dependencies, with their large 
native and almost infinitesimal European populations, 
and the more important islands adjacent to Africa, are 
managed by governors, with the assistance of councils. 

In the numerous islands or island groups which are 
subject to the British Crown there is much variety of 
constitution. Thus, in the Bahamas, in Barbadoes, 
and in the Bermudas, we find the threefold constitu- 
tion consisting of a governor, a popular elected As- 
sembly, and a Legislative Council nominated by the 
Crown. In the Leeward Islands, which were combined 
into a single Government in 1882, the Federal Govern- 
ment consists of a governor and a Legislative Council 
of ten nominated and ten elected members, represent- 
ing the different islands. In Jamaica there is now no 
representative Assembly, but tlie governor is aided by 
a Privy Council, and a Legislative Council of eighteen 



458 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

members, of whom four are official, five nominated by 
the governor, and nine elected by colonists who pay a 
certain level of taxation. It is specially provided in the 
Constitution that six of the elected members can, if 
unanimous, carry any financial measure. Most of the 
small islands are administered by a governor and a 
Legislative Council consisting partly of official mem- 
bers and partly of members nominated by the Crown. 
It has been remarked that there is a strong tendency of 
opinion in the island colonies hostile to representative 
institutions, and in favour of more concentrated go- 
vernment honestly administered. Thus, in Grenada 
and St. Vincent representative institutions were abo- 
lished at the request of the people in 1876 and 1877, 
and a form of government by a governor and Legisla- 
tive Council, partly official and partly unofficial, has 
been adopted. A very similar change had been effected, 
a few years earlier, in several of the islands which 
formed part of the Leeward Islands. Jamaica, in 1866, 
surrendered a representative Constitution that had ex- 
isted for 200 years, and accepted a far less democratic 
Constitution ; and on the coast of Central America re- 
presentative institutions, after an experience of seven- 
teen years, were abolished in British Honduras in 1870. 
In Australia the colonial governments have passed 
through several phases, and questions relating to the 
formation of an Upper Chamber, its power over money 
Bills, and its relations to the governor and the Lower 
House, have been fiercely debated, and usually argued 
chiefiy upon British precedents. It is here only neces- 
sary to state the nature of the Upper Council in each 
colony. In New South Wales the Legislative Council 
is nominated for life by the governor. The minimum 
number is fixed at twenty-one ; but this number has 
been lar^^ely exceeded, and there was one unsuccessful 



CH. IV. COLONIAL SENATES — HEREDITY 459 

attempt, in the premiership of Sir Charles Cowper in 
1861, to overbear the Council by nominating a large 
number of members in order to win a majority. It was 
strongly condemned, both by public opinion in the 
colony and by the authorities in England.^ Four-fifths 
of the members must be persons not holding any paid 
office under the Crown, but this is not held to include 
officers in the sea and land forces or retired officers on 
pension.^ In Queensland the Legislative Council is 
formed on the same principle of nomination ; in Victo- 
ria, in South Australia, in Western Australia, and in 
Tasmania, it is an elective body, directly elected for 
limited periods, but usually under a special property 
qualification. In New Zealand the less democratic 
method is adopted, and the Legislative Council consists 
of members nominated by the governor. Before 1891 
they were appointed for life ; but an Act of that year 
made all new appointments tenable for seven years 
only, though the councillors may be reappointed.^ 

If we turn now from these various constitutions to 
our own we shall find, I think, a very general agree- 
ment among serious political thinkers that it would 
be an extreme misfortune if the upper, or revising. 
Chamber in the Legislature were abolished, and an 
agreement, which, if less general, is still very wide, 
that it must, in some not far distant day, be materially 
altered. For my own part, I should consider it a mis- 
fortune if the hereditary element, of which it is now 
mainly composed, were not still largely represented in 
it. The peerage occupies a vast place in English his- 
tory and tradition. It has a widespread influence .and 



' See Coghlan's Wealth and « Coghlan, p. 501. 

Progress of New South Wales^ '■'■ Xeir Zealand Year-Boole^ 

p. 500. Rusden's History of 1894, p. U. 
Australia^ iii. 258-62. 



460 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

an indisputable popularity ; and, as I have endea- 
voured to show, its members possess in a high degree 
some of the qualities and capacities that are most 
useful in the government of men. Their political pro- 
minence not only represents, but also sustains and 
strengthens, a connection between the upper classes of 
the country and political life, to which England owes 
very much, and in an age as democratic as our own it 
may qualify some evils, and can produce no danger. 

It must also be remembered that, Avithout resorting 
to revolutionary measures, no reform of the House of 
Lords can be carried without its own assent, and it is 
scarcely within the limits of possibility that it would 
sanction a law which extinguished its hereditary ele- 
ment. To carry such a measure in sj^ite of it would 
probably prove a long and most serious task. It has 
become a fashion of late years, at times when the House 
does, or threatens to do, something which is thought 
unpopular to organise great London demonstrations 
against it. Some thousands of men and women, 
largely swollen by mere holiday-seekers, and rejDre- 
senting at most a very doubtful voting preponderance 
in two or three London constituencies, are accus- 
tomed to assemble in Hyde Park, and by the mouth 
of men who, for the most part, would be unable to find 
a single constituency that would send them into Parlia- 
ment, to proclaim themselves the voice of the nation, 
and hurl defiance at the Upper House. In England 
these things have little weight. In France they have 
been more serious, for more than one revolution, for 
which the immense majority of the French people had 
never wished, has been accomplished by the violence of 
a Paris mob. There can, however, be little doubt that, 
if a proposal for the violent destruction of the House 
of Lords were brought authoritatively before the coun- 



CH. IV. REFORMS OF THE PEERAGE 461 

try^ that House would find in the great silent classes of 
the nation a reserve of power that would prove very for- 
midable. Nor is it possible to predict what results 
and what reactions would ensue if once the barriers of 
law were broken down, and the torrent of revolution- 
ary change let loose. It is not likely that true liberty 
would gain by the struggle. 

The British aristocracy, as we have seen, contains a 
large number of members who possess every moral and 
intellectual quality that is needed for a good legislator. 
It includes also many members who have neither the 
tastes, nor the knowledge, nor the capacity of legisla- 
tors, and whose presence in the House of Lords proba- 
bly tends more than any other single circumstance to 
discredit it in the country. The obvious remedy is, 
that the whole peerage should elect a certain number 
of their members to represent them. Eighty or 100 
peers returned in this way to the Upper House would 
form a body of men of commanding influence and of 
the highest legislative capacity. The Irish and Scotch 
peerages already furnish examples of peers of the realm 
who are not members of the Upper House, though they 
are eli,2:ible for that position. It is much to be desired 
that this class should be increased. Among other ad- 
vantages, it would meet the case of men who, having 
attained great eminence, or performed great services in 
fields very widely removed from politics, are deserving 
of the highest dignity the State can bestow, but who 
have no natural aptitude for the task of a legislator. 
On the whole, few better constituencies can be con- 
ceived than the whole body of the peerage ; but the 
elected peers should be chosen by a cumulative vote, or 
by some other method which would secure the propor- 
tionate representation of all shades of opinion, and not, 
as is now the case in Ireland and Scotland, by a method 



462 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

that practically extinguishes minorities. Those peers 
who were not elected, or who did not wish to be elected, 
to the Upper House should have the right of standing 
like other men for the Lower one. 

To these ought, I think, to be added a number of 
life peers limited by statute. Some of them might be 
what are called * official peerages.^ Great positions of 
dignity or responsibility, which are rarely attained 
without exceptional ability and experience, which make 
men the natural and official representatives of large 
classes, and bring them into close touch with their in- 
terests, sentiments, and needs, might well carry with 
them the privilege of a seat in the Upper House. But, 
in addition to these, the Crown should have the power 
of conferring life peerages on men who, in many dif- 
ferent walks, are eminently distinguished by their ge- 
nius, knowledge, or services. In this way it would be 
possible vastly to increase both the influence and the 
efficiency of the Upper House, and to bring into it men 
who do not possess the fortunes that are generally sup- 
posed to be needed for an hereditary peerage. The life 
peerages that are already possessed by the bishops and 
by some law lords furnish a precedent. 

Whether beyond the limits I have stated, the repre- 
sentative principle should be introduced into the British 
Upper House is a more difficult question. In com- 
paring England with the Colonies, it must always be 
remembered that a genuine aristocracy is a thing which 
the Colonies do not possess, and which it is not pos- 
sible to extemporise. It should be remembered, too, 
that a new country, where few traditions have been 
formed, where all the conditions of life and property 
and class relations are very simple, and where the task 
of legislation is restricted to a narrow sphere, may be 
well governed under constitutions that would be very 



CH. IV. REFORMS OF THE PEERAGE 463 

unsuited to a highly complex and artificial society, 
which is itself the centre of a vast and most heteroge- 
neous empire. American experience shows that the 
system of double, or indirect election, cannot retain 
its distinctive merits in times or countries where par- 
ty spirit runs very high. The men who are elected by 
this method simply represent the opinions of a party 
majority in the electing body, and are designated by 
the organisation by which that electing body is cre- 
ated. 

Some statesmen of considerable authority would vest 
county councils and municipalities with large powers of 
electing members to the Upper House. Whether these 
for the most part very recently constructed bodies are 
as yet so conspicuous for their influence or their judicial 
wisdom that they could be safely entrusted with this task 
seems to me very doubtful. If the projects which are 
now vaguely agitated for breaking up the United King- 
dom into a federation should ever in any form or 
measure be accomplished, something might be done to 
mitigate the weakness and the danger that such a dis- 
integration would inevitably produce, by receiving in 
the Upper House the representatives of local legisla- 
tures ; and a similar system might with great advan- 
tage be extended to the distant parts of the Empire. 
Distant colonies, which lie wholly outside the range 
of English party politics, and have no English party 
objects to attain, would almost certainly send to an 
Upper House men of superior character and abilities, 
and their presence might have some real effect in 
strengthening tlie ties that bind the Empire together. 

It is impossible to predict what form public opinion 
on these matters may assume. Some pressing party 
interest, or passion, or personal ambition, will probably 
in the last issue determine its course, unless timely wis- 



464 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. it. 

dom iu dealing with this momentous question is dis- 
played by the true lovers of the Constitution. 

Some other and minor reforms of the House of Lords 
seem also to be loudly called for. One of these is the 
conversion of an unlimited into a limited veto. A 
power of preventing for all time measures which both 
the House of Commons and the constituencies desire 
should not be lodged with any non-elected legislative 
body, and an unlimited creation of peers is the only 
means which the Constitution provides for overcoming 
the resistance of the House of Lords. That House, in 
fact, never attempts to exert its full theoretical power 
on any large question, though there have been occa- 
sional and deplorable instances of its rejecting, through 
long successions of Parliaments, in spite of constant 
majorities in the Lower House, reforms affecting small 
classes of people and exciting no widespread interest. 
But on great questions, and on questions involving 
party issues, this is never done ; and the very magni- 
tude of the power theoretically vested in the House of 
Lords is an obstacle to its moderate exercise. A veto 
limited and defined by law would be more fearlessly 
exercised and more generally accepted. The English 
system of veto resembles in some respects the English 
system of parliamentary impeachment, which, extend- 
ing to life, liberty, and the confiscation of goods, is a 
weapon of such tremendous force that it has become 
completely obsolete ; while in America, impeachment, 
carrying only very moderate penalties, is sometimes, 
though rarely, employed. 

It is well understood that, on all great questions, the 
veto of the House of Lords is now merely suspensory, 
securing that no important measure can be carried 
which does not represent the distinct, tlie deliberate, 
the decided opinion of the nation. When a policy 



CH. IV. A LIMITED VETO 465 

which the House of Commons has adopted and the 
House of Lords rejected has been clearly ratified by 
the nation, voting on a distinct issue, and by consid- 
erable and sustained majorities, the House of Lords 
invariably accepts it. But the importance of the func- 
tion it exercises in delaying great changes until this 
sanction has been obtained can hardly be overesti- 
mated. As I have already said, many measures pass 
through the House of Commons which the constituen- 
cies never desired, or even considered, because they 
were proposed by ministers who, on totally different 
questions, had obtained a parliamentary majority. 
Other measures are the result of transient excitement 
arising from some transient cause. Others are carried, 
in the face of great opposition, by a bare, or perhaps 
languid, divided, and dwindling majority. Other 
measures are accepted, not because they are desired, 
but because they cannot be rejected without overthrow- 
ing a ministry. 

With the increasing influence of ignorance in the 
electorate, and the rapid disintegration of Parliaments 
into independent groups, the necessity of a strong re- 
vising tribunal, exercising a suspensory veto, becomes 
continually greater. It is extremely desirable that the 
negative of the House of Loi'ds should at least extend 
over one Parliament, so that the particular questions 
at issue should be brought directly before the electors. 
It would also be very desirable that it should be finally 
overcome, not by a bare majority of the Plouse of Com- 
mons, but by a majority of at least two-thirds. 

The adoption of provisions making such majorities 
necessary in many branches of legislation and admin- 
istration would furnish a powerful safeguard against 
revolutionary or tyrannical measures. In America, a 
two-thirds majority must exist in both Houses in order 
VOL. I. 30 



466 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

to overcome the veto of the President ; and we have 
already seen the still stronger precautions that are 
taken in the American Constitution against parliamen- 
tary attacks on the Constitution^ on contract^ pro- 
perty^ or individual freedom. In theory, the unlimited 
power of veto vested in the House of Lords forms a 
sufficient barrier against such attacks. In practice 
this protection has become far from sufficient. With- 
out the existence of a real Constitution, limiting par- 
liamentary powers, and protected, as in America, by a 
Supreme Court, England will never possess, in these 
vital points, the security which exists beyond the At- 
lantic. Perhaps the best protection that could be 
obtained without such a fundamental reorganisation 
would be a law providing that no measure should be 
carried against the resistance of the Upper House un- 
less it had been adopted by two successive Houses of 
Commons, and by majorities of at least two-thirds. 

Such a change would, in theory, diminish the pow- 
ers of the House of Lords. In practice it would, I 
believe, considerably increase them ; and, if it were 
accompanied by reforms such as I have indicated, it 
would render the House very powerful for good. In 
the days when government was mainly in the hands 
of classes who were largely influenced by traditions, 
precedents, and the spirit of compromise, tacit un- 
derstandings, unrecognised by law, were sufficient to 
define the provinces, to support, and at the same time to 
limit, the powers of the different parts of the Consti- 
tution. Power in England has now passed into other 
hands ; another spirit prevails, and it is very neces- 
sary that every function and capacity should be clearly 
recognised and accurately limited by law. 

Another reform which would, I think, be very ad- 
visable would be that in England, as in most Continen- 



CH. IV. MINISTERS IN BOTH HOUSES 467 

tal countries, Cabinet ministers should have the right 
of opposing or defending their measures in both Houses, 
though their right of voting should be restricted to 
the House to which they belong. The great evil of 
the present system is especially felt when the most 
powerful minister is in the House of Lords, while the 
decisive verdict on his policy lies with the Commons. 
A policy explained by subordinates or delegates has 
never the same weight of authority as when it is ex- 
pounded by the principal. It is a manifest defect in 
the Constitution that when the existence of a ministry 
depends on a House of Commons decision on some 
question of foreign policy, such a minister as Lord 
Salisbury or Lord Eosebery should be excluded. It is 
also a great evil that a Prime Minister, when forming 
his ministry, should be restricted in his choice of the 
men who are to fill posts of immense responsibility, 
by a consideration of the House to which they belong. 
A change which made such a restriction unnecessary 
would certainly add to the efficiency of ministries, 
and its benefits would far outweigh its disadvantages. 
These disadvantages appear to be a slight increase of 
the labour thrown on Cabinet ministers, and an un- 
balanced increase of the debating (though not voting) 
powers of the ministry, arising from the fact that the 
chief ministers would have the power of speaking in 
two Houses, while the leaders of the Opposition would 
be confined to one.^ The appearance, however, of a 
Cabinet minister in the House to which he did not be- 
long ought, I think, to be optional, and not obligatory. 
The last reform I would suggest would be some 



' It would he, of course, possible to extend the privilege to 
members of either House who had held Cabinet rank. 



468 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. iv. 

relaxation of the 2:)resent rule by whicli all the stages 
through which a measure has passed are lost if the 
measure is not completed in a single session. A com- 
plete abolition of this rule, which would enable the 
House of Commons to take up at the beginning of a 
session the measures which were left unfinished in the 
last, at the stages which they had then reached, pro- 
vided there had been no dissolution in the interval, 
has been often advocated. It has been argued that 
the present system involves an enormous waste of time 
and power, that this waste becomes continually more 
serious with the increase of public business, that it 
gives a great encouragement to deliberate obstruction. 
Few things, indeed, seem more absurd than that a 
measure which has been thoroughly discussed and re- 
peatedly sanctioned by the House of Commons should 
be lost at its last stage, not because of any parliamen- 
tary defeat, but simply because the House, by mere 
pressure of business, has been unable to complete its 
work before it is prorogued for its holiday, and that in 
the ensuing session the whole ground has to be trod- 
den again by the same men. Such is the method of 
doing business which is adopted by one of the busiest, 
and also one of the most loquacious, assemblies in the 
world. In most foreign legislatures a different method 
is pursued. In Belgium, Denmark, France, Greece, 
the Netherlands, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Norway, 
and the United States, unfinished legislation may be 
taken up in the following session in the stage in which 
it was left when the prorogation took place. ^ Yet in 
none of these countries, with the possible exception of 



^ See Dickinson's Constitution and Procedure of Foreign Par- 
liaments^ 2(1 ecL, p. 9. 



CH. IV. POSTPONED LEGISLATION 469 

America, is the pressure of business as great as in the 
British Parliament.^ 

There are, however, real arguments in favour of the 
British system. It enables the House of Commons 
easily to get rid of many proposals which it does not 
consider ripe or fit for immediate legislation, but which 
for various reasons it does not wish to meet wdth a 
direct negative. There is also another consideration, 
which I have already indicated, and which, though it 
is not often openly expressed, is, I believe, widely felt. 
It is, that the House of Commons, as it is at present 
constituted, with its practically unlimited powers, may 
become, under the direction of a rash or unscrupulous 
minister, so great an evil and danger in the State that 
whatever seriously clogs the wheels of the machine is 
rather an advantage than a disadvantage. Great as is 
the scandal arising from deliberate obstruction or the 
unbridled license of loquacious vanity ; great as are the 
evils of the postponement of much necessary legisla- 
tion, or the hasty and perfunctory discharge of duties 
which do not lend themselves to party exigencies, 
these things, in the eyes of many, are not too high a 
price to pay for an exemption from the calamities that 
would follow, if a party majority and an ambitious 
minister could swiftly do their will in tearing to pieces 
the old institutions and settled social conditions of the 
country, in order to build up their own power on their 
ruin. As long as England is governed under its pre- 
sent system ' the declining efficiency of Parliament " 



' One result of this system is lie Bills introduced by private 

the great obstacle it throws in members in five years, from 

the way of legislation initiated 1884 to 1889 ; 960 were intro- 

by private members. Mr. Dick- duced, 110 only became law 

inson has given some curious (p. 8). 
statistics about the fate of pub- 



470 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. iv. 

will be watched by many patriotic men with no un- 
mingled regret. The downward progress is at least 
a slow one. In spite of the destruction of all the 
balances and restrictions of the Constitution,, the men 
who desire to revolutionise find many obstacles in their 
way, and the men who, in order to win votes in their 
constituencies, have pledged themselves to revolution- 
ise, without wishing to do so, find easy pretexts for 
evading their promises. 

No serious evil, however, I think, would follow if it 
were provided that, when a measure had passed through 
all its stages in the Commons, its consideration in the 
Lords, and the consideration of the Lords' amendments 
in the Commons, might be adjourned to, or extended 
over, the ensuing session. The detailed revision and 
amendment of elaborate measures, which is one of the 
most useful and uncontested duties of an Upper House, 
cannot be properly performed when those measures 
are only sent up to it at the very end of a session, and 
have to be hurried through all their stages in a few 
days. Careful and well-considered legislation is, after 
all, the great end of a legislative body ; and it would 
be much more fully attained in England if the con- 
sideration of laws, which is unduly protracted in one 
House, were not unduly hurried in the other. 



CH. V. THE BALANCE OF POWER 471 



CHAPTER V 

NATIOl!^ALITIES 

The effects of democracy on the liberty of the world 
are not only to be traced in the changes that are 
passing over the Governments and constitutions of the 
different nations, and in the wide fields of religions, 
intellectual, social, and industrial life ; they are also 
powerfully felt in international arrangements, and es- 
pecially in the growth of a doctrine of nationalities as 
the basis of a new right of nations, which has been 
one of the most conspicuous features of nineteenth- 
century history. It is essentially different from the 
old doctrine of the divine right of kings, which re- 
garded great tracts of the world as the rightful domi- 
nion of particular dynasties ; and also from the doc- 
trine of the balance of power, which prevailed at the 
Peace of Westphalia, and governed most of the capital 
changes in Europe during the two succeeding centu- 
ries. According to the great politicians and political 
philosophers of the seventeenth or eighteenth century, 
the maintenance of European stability is the supreme 
end of international politics. The first object in 
every rearrangement of territory should be to make it 
impossible for one great Power to absorb or dominate 
over the others ; and, by multiplying what are called 
buffer States, and by many artificial divisions and ap- 
portionments of territory, they endeavour to diminish 
the danger of collisions, or at least to limit as much as 



472 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

possible their number and their scope. Territorial 
changes^, in their view, should be reg*arded mainly with 
a view to these objects, and justified or condemned in 
proportion as they attained them. The more modern 
doctrine is, that every people, or large section of a 
nation, has an absolute and indefeasible right to the 
form of government it pleases, and that every imposi- 
tion upon it of another rule is essentially illegitimate. 

It is not here necessary to trace in much detail the 
genesis of this view. It was prominent among the 
original doctrines of the French Eevolution, but it 
was not long consistently maintained. Popular votes 
taken under the pressure of an occupying army, and 
largely accompanied by banishments, proscriptions, 
and coicps d'etat, had, it is true, some place in the first 
conquests of the Eevolution. The Convention pro- 
claimed in the loftiest language its determination to 
respect the inalienable right of every people to choose 
its own form of government,' and the Republic made 
much use of the doctrine of the rights of nationalities 
to kindle revolts ; but it also made those revolts pow- 
erful instruments for effecting its ow^n territorial ag- 
grandisement, and it was speedily transformed into a 
military despotism the most formidable, the most ag- 
gressive, the most insatiably ambitious the modern 
world has ever seen. The strength and tenacity of the 
sentiment of nationality were, indeed, seldom more 
forcibly displayed than in the struggle of Spain and of 
the Tyrol against the Emperor who professed to be 
the armed representative of the French Revolution. 

After Waterloo the rights of nationalities suffered a 
long eclipse. The Congress of Vienna and the arrange- 
ments of the peace divided countries and populations 



' Sorel, V Europe et la Revolution Frangaise^ iii. 154-55, 169-70. 



CH. V. NATIONALITIES, 1830 — 1848 473 

among the victorious Powers, with the most absolute 
disregard for national antecedents and national wishes. 
The old republic of Genoa was handed over to Pied- 
mont, which it detested. The still older republic of 
Venice became a province of Austria. Saxony was 
divided, and a great part annexed to Prussia. Poland 
was again partitioned. Catholic Belgium was united 
with Protestant Holland, and the Catholic electorates 
on the Rhine with Protestant Prussia. The doctrine 
of the divine right of kings, and a formal repudi- 
ation of the right of nations to choose their forms of 
government, were the basis of the new ' Holy Alliance,^ 
of the resolutions of the Congress of Laybach, and of 
the whole policy of Metternich, and in accordance with 
these principles an Austrian army put down insur- 
rection in Naples, and a French army in Spain. 

There were, however, signs that the doctrine of na- 
tionalities was not extinct, and there were movements 
in this direction which excited hopes that were not fully 
justified by the event. The enthusiasm evoked by the 
emancipation of Greece, by the revolt of the Spanish 
colonies in America, and by the foreign policy of Can- 
ning, marks the turn of the stream, and the French Re- 
volution of 1830 kindled a democratic and a nationalist 
movement in many countries much like that which ac- 
companied the Revolution of 1848. There were insur- 
rections or agitations in many of the States of Italy, in 
Germany, Denmark, Poland, Hungary, Belgium, and 
Brazil. Most of them were speedily suppressed. Russia 
crushed with merciless severity insurrection in Poland. 
An Austrian army put down revolt in the Pontifical 
States. In Germany and Austria and Italy politics 
soon moved along the old grooves, and the spirit of re- 
action was triumphant ; but the separation of Belgium 
from Holland marked a great step in the direction of 



474 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

the rights of nationalities ; the goyernment of France 
now rested on a parliamentary basis ; popular institu- 
tions were introduced into Denmark ; the aristocratic 
cantons of Switzerland were transformed, and the Ee- 
form Bill of 1832 placed English politics on a more 
democratic basis. Neither Louis Philippe nor Lord 
Palmerston desired to propagate revolution, and their 
alliance was chequered and broken by many dissen- 
sions ; but, on the whole, it served the cause of liberty 
in Europe, and still more the cause of non-interven- 
tion. 

The French Revolution of 1848 again changed the 
aspect of affairs, and in a few months nearly all Europe 
was convulsed. The revolutions which then took place 
were essentially revolutions of nationality, and though 
most of them were for a time suppressed, they nearly 
all eventually accom23lished their designs. I do not 
propose to relate their well-known history. It is sulSi- 
cient to say that the French Grovernment, in the mani- 
festo which was issued by Lamartine in the March of 
1848, while disclaiming any right or intention of in- 
tervening in the internal affairs of other countries, 
asserted, perhaps more strongly than had ever been be- 
fore done in an official document, the legitimacy of all 
popular efforts for national independence, and clearly 
intimated that when such risings took place the Repub- 
lic would suffer no foreign intervention to suppress 
them. 

The doctrine of nationalities has been especially for- 
mulated and defended by Italian writers, who in this 
field occupy the foremost place. The aspiration towards 
a common nationality that slowly grew up among the 
Italian peoi:)le, in spite of the many and ancient politi- 
cal divisions that separated them, may be probably 
traced to the traditions of the old Roman power. Dante 



CH. V. WHAT CONSTITUTES A NATIONALITY ? 475 

and Maccliiavelli at once displayed and strengthened it, 
and it has greatly coloured the Italian political philo- 
sophy of our century. 

The first question to be asked is, What constitutes a 
nationality ? Vico had defined it as ' a natural society 
of men who, by unity of territory, of origin, of cus- 
toms, and of language, are drawn into a community 
of life and of social conscience/ More modern Ital- 
ian writers, among whom Mancini, Mamiani, and Pie- 
rantoni are conspicuous, have employed themselves 
in amplifying this definition. They enumerate as the 
constituent elements of nationality, race, religion, lan- 
guage, geographical position, manners, 'history, and 
laws, and when these or several of them combine they 
create a nationality. It becomes perfect when a spe- 
cial type has been formed ; when a great homogeneous 
body of men acquires, for the first time a consciousness 
of its separate nationality, and thus becomes * a moral 
unity with a common thought.^ This is the cog it o ergo 
sum of nations, the self-consciousness which establishes 
in nations as in individuals a true personality. And as 
the individual man, according to these writers, has an 
inalienable right to personal freedom, so also has the 
nationality. Every government of one nationality by 
another is of the nature of slavery, and is essentially 
illegitimate, and the true right of nations is the re- 
cognition of the full right of each nationality to ac- 
quire and maintain a separate existence, to create or to 
change its government according to its desires. Civil 
communities should form, extend, and dissolve them- 
selves by a spontaneous process, and in accordance with 
this right and principle of nationality. Every sove- 
reign who appeals to a foreign Power to suppress move- 
ments among his own people ; every foreign Power 
which intervenes as Eussia did in Hungary, and as 



476 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

Austria did in Italy, for the purpose of suppressing 
a national movement, is essentially criminal. On the 
other hand, any war for the emancipation of struggling 
nationalities, such as that of France with Austria, and 
Russia with Turkey, derives its justification from this 
fact, quite irrespective of the immediate cause or pre- 
texts that produced it.^ 

Such, pushed to its full extent and definition, is the 
philosophy which, in vaguer and looser terms, per- 
vades very widely the political thought of Europe, and 
has played a great part in the historic development 
of the nineteenth century. It may be observed that, 
though the idea of nationality is greatly affected by de- 
mocracy, it is in itself distinct from it, and is, in fact, 
very frequently separated from it. The idea and pas- 
sion of nationality blend quite as easily with loyalty to 
a dynasty as with attachment to a republican form of 
government, and nations that value very little internal 
or constitutional freedom are often passionately devoted 
to their national individuality and independence. It 
may be observed also, that the many different elements 
of nationality which have been mentioned rarely con- 
cur, and that no one of them is always sufficient to 
mark out a distinct nationality. As a matter of history, 
all great nations have been formed, in the first instance, 
by many successive conquests and aggrandisements, and 
have gradually become more or less perfectly fused into 
a single organism. Race, except when it is marked by 
colour, is usually a most obscure and deceptive guide, 
and in most European countries different race elements 

^ An excellent revieAv of the valuable essay by Professor 

Italian school of writers on Padeletti, ibid. iii. 464. M. 

nationality, by Professor von ifimile Ollivier, in his Empire 

Holtzendorff, will be found in Liberal^ has discussed the 

the Revue de Droit Iniernation- French views on the subject, 
a/, ii. 92 - 106. See, too, a 



CH. V. NATIONALITY AND DEMOCRACY 477 

are inextricably mixed. Language and religion have 
had a much greater and deeper power in forming na- 
tional unities ; but there are examples of different 
creeds and languages very successfully blended into one 
nationality, and there are examples of separations of 
feeling and character, due to historical, political, and 
industrial causes, existing where race, creed, and lan- 
guage are all the same. 

In the opinion of some writers, even the will of the 
people must be disregarded when questions of race, 
or language, or geography, demand an annexation, 
and in each country the prevailing theory of na- 
tionality is very manifestly coloured by national cir- 
cumstances. Thus German writers, in defending the 
annexation of Alsace, have not contented themselves 
with arguing that this province was acquired in repel- 
ling an unjust invasion, and that its retention is essen- 
tial to the security of Germany. While recognising 
fully that an overwhelming majority of Alsatian votes 
would be given in favour of France, they have justified 
the annexation on the ground of the doctrine of na- 
tionalities, as restoring to Germany an essentially Ger- 
man province, which had been torn from her in part 
by gross fraud, and which is inhabited by a population 
who, though not German in sentiment, were at least 
German in origin, in character, and in language. 
French writers have defended their designs upon the 
Ehine on the groand that the Rhine boundary is 
clearly the natural frontier of France, and that she is, 
therefore, only completing her nationality by annex- 
ing a territory exclusively inhabited by a loyal German 
population. Italian writers have demanded the absorp- 
tion or annexation of Italian-speaking communities in 
Switzerland and Austria because they are Italian, en- 
tirely irrespective of all other considerations. 



478 DEMOCRACY AJSD LIBERTY ch. v. 

A more considerable section, however, of tlie up- 
holders of the doctrine of nationalities maintain that 
annexations can only be justified, and can always be 
justified, by a plebiscite of the whole male population, 
and it was one of the great objects of Xapoleon III. 
and of Count Cavour to introduce this principle into 
the 23ublic right of Europe. It was adopted when 
Savoy and Xice were annexed to Trance, and in the 
case of the different Italian States which, through 
their own spontaneous action, were incorporated in 
the Italian unity. When, after the war of 1866, the 
Austrian Emperor, in order to avoid the humiliation 
of treating directly with Italy, placed Yenetia in the 
hands of Xapoleon III., it was transferred by that 
sovereign to Italy subject to the consent of the popula- 
tion by a jDlebiscite. So, too, the invasion of Neapoli- 
tan territory in 1860, and the capture of Eome in 1870 
by Piedmontese troops, without any declaration of war 
or any real provocation, and in violation of plain treaty 
obligations, were held to have been justified by the 
popular votes which shortly after incorporated 2\a]3les 
and Eome in the Italian Kingdom. In the Treaty of 
Prague, which was concluded in 1866, and which, 
among other things, made Prussia the ruler of Schles- 
wig-Holstein, there was a clause promising that if the 
inhabitants of the northern parts of Schleswig expressed 
i)y a free vote their desire to be reunited to Denmark, 
their wish should be conceded ; but, in spite of a 
largely signed petition for such a vote, this promise, to 
the great dishonour of Germany, has never been ful- 
filled.^ The last case, as far as I am aware, of the em- 
ployment of a plebiscite to sanction an annexation Avas 
in 1878, when the little island of St. Barthelemy, in 



Revue de Droit InternationaL ii. 325-26. 



CH. V. PLEBISCITES 479 

the Antilles, was ceded by the King of Sweden and 
Norway to the French Kepublic/ 

Sometimes, as in Italy, the movement of nationality 
is a movement of sympathy and agglomeration, draw- 
ing togetlier men wlio had long been politically sepa- 
rated. More frequently it is a disiiitegrating force, 
and many of its advocates desire to call into intense life 
and self-consciousness the different race elements in a 
great and composite empire, with the hope that they 
may ultimately assert for themselves the right of dis- 
tinct national individuality. ^ 

Within certain limits, the doctrine of nationalities 
undoubtedly represents a real and considerable progress 
in human affairs. The best, the truest, the most solid 
basis on which the peace of the civilised world can rest 
is the free consent of the great masses of its population 
to the form of government under which they live. 
The increased recognition of this fact, the increased 
sensitiveness of the European conscience to the iniquity 
of destroying wantonly the independence of a civilised 
nation, or maintaining one civilised nation under the 
yoke of another, is a genuine sign of moral progress. 
At the same time there can, I think, be little question 
that the doctrine of nationalities has assumed forms 
and been pushed to extremes which make it a great 
danger to the peace of the world. It becomes the readi- 
est weapon in the hands both of a conqueror and of a 
revolutionist, and, by discrediting the force of all inter- 
national treaties, deepening lines of division, and in- 
troducing elements of anarchy and rebellion into most 
great nations, it threatens the most valuable elements 
of our civilisation. 



^ See Les Annexions et les Plebiscites dans VHistoire Contempo- 
raine^ par E. R. De Card (1880). 



480 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

Scarcely anyone would apply it to tlie dealings of 
civilised nations with savages, or with the semi-civilised 
portions of the globe. It is, indeed, most curious to 
observe the passion with which nations that are accus- 
tomed to affirm the inalienable right of self-government 
in the most unqualified terms have thrown themselves 
into a career of forcible annexation in the barbarous 
world. Nor is it easy to obtain a true judgment of the 
opinion even of civilised communities. A plebiscite is 
very rarely the unforced, spontaneous expression of a 
genuine national desire. It is usually taken to ratify 
or indemnify an accomplished fact. It is taken only 
when there can be no doubt about the result, and a 
strong centralised Government has, on such occasions, 
an enormous power of organising and directing. In 
all countries a great portion, in most countries a large 
majority, of the people take no real interest in political 
alfairs, and if a great constitutional or dynastic ques- 
tion is submitted to their vote by a strongly organised 
Government, this Government will have no difficulty 
in dictating the response. Tolstoi, in one of his later 
works, has made some remarks on this subject which, 
though very little in harmony with prevailing ideas, 
contain, I believe, a large measure of truth. 'I have 
always/ he writes, ' noticed that the most serious and 
the most respectable members of the labouring class 
show a complete indifference to, and even contempt 
for, patriotic manifestations of every kind. I have ob- 
served the same thing among the labouring class in 
other nations, and my observation has often been con- 
firmed by cultivated Frenchmen, Germans, and Eng- 
lishmen, when speaking of their own fellow-citizens. 
The labouring population is too intensely and too ex- 
clusively occupied with the care of providing for its 
own subsistence to take an interest in those political 



CH. V. TOLSTOI ON POPULAR OPINION 481 

questions which lie at the root of patriotism. Such 
questions as Russian influence in the East, the unity of 
Germany, the restoration to France of her severed pro- 
vinces, do not really touch the people, not only because 
they scarcely ever know the first elements of the pro- 
blem, but also because the interests of their lives lie 
wholly outside the circle of politics. A man of the 
people will never really care to know what is the exact 
line of the national frontier. ... To him his country 
is his village or his district. He either knows nothing 
of what lies beyond, or it is a matter of perfect indiffer- 
ence to him to what government these territories be- 
long. If a Russian emigrates, he will not care whether 
his new home is under the dominion of Russia, or Tur- 
key, or China.' ^ 

But even putting this consideration aside, can it 
seriously be maintained that a great and ancient na- 
tion is obliged to acquiesce in its own disintegration 
whenever a portion of its people can be persuaded to de- 
sire a separate political existence ? If a popular move- 
ment can at any time destroy the unity of the State, 
the authority of the sovereign power, and the bind- 
ing force of international treaties, the whole public 
order of Europe must give way. Some of the coun- 
tries which play the most useful and respectable parts 
in the concert of nations, such as Switzerland, Belgium, 
and the Austrian Empire, would be threatened with 



' Tolstoi, U Esprit Chretien et descend the scale of intellectual 
Ze Paz;rio2;Vs?7ie, pp. 88-89, 93. It culture. But there is a degree 
is curious to contrast this judg- where it altogether disappears — 
ment with the remarks of Goethe Avhere men rise, so to speak, 
to Eckermann. 'In general, above the lines of nationhood, 
national hatred has this special and sympathise with the happi- 
characteristic, that you will al- ness or unhappiness of a neigh- 
ways find it most intense, most bouring nation as if it consisted 
violent, in proportion as you of compatriots.' 

VOL. I. 31 



482 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

immediate dissolution ; and there is scarcely a great 
country in Europe which does not contain districts 
with distinct race and religious elements, which might 
easily be quickened into separate agitation. As in 
marriage the conviction that the tie is a life tie, be- 
ing supported by all the weight of law and opinion, is 
sufficient in the vast majority of cases to counteract 
the force of caprice or temporary disagreement, and 
produce acquiescence and content, so, in the politi- 
cal world, the belief in the sovereign authority of the 
State, and in the indissoluble character of national 
bonds, gives stability and unity to a nation. Divorce 
in families, and revolution in States, may sometimes 
be necessary, and even desirable, but only under very 
grave and exceptional circumstances. 

If the bonds of national unity are lightly severed ; if 
the policy of disintegration is preached as in itself a de= 
sirable thing ; if the constituent elements of a king- 
dom are encouraged or invited to assert their separate 
individuality, nothing but anarchy can ensue. The 
door will be at once opened to endless agitation and 
intrigue, and every ambitious, restless, unscrupu- 
lous conqueror will find his path abundantly prepared. 
It is the object of all such men to see surrounding 
nations divided, weakened, and perhaps deprived of 
important strategical positions, through internal dis- 
sensions. One of the great dangers of our age is that 
wars are likely to be carried on, in the French phrase, 
' a coup de revolutions,^ that is, by deliberately kin- 
dling democratic, socialist, or nationalist risings. It 
has been stated on good authority, that the decision of 
German statesmen to adopt universal suffrage as the 
basis of their Constitution was largely due to the de- 
sire to guard against such dangers. From the French 
revolutionists, who begin their career of invasion by 



CH. V. AMERICAN ANNEXATIONS 483 

promising French assistance to every struggling na- 
tionality, to the modern Panslavist, who is often preach- 
ing the right of nationalities in the mere interest of a 
corrupt and persecuting despotism, this doctrine has 
been abundantly made use of to cloak the most selfish 
and the most mischievous designs. Those men are not 
serving the true interests of humanity who enlarge the 
pretexts of foreign aggression, and weaken the force 
of treaties and international obligations, on which the 
peace and stability of civilisation so largely depend. .^ 

Such considerations sufficiently show the danger of 
the exaggerated language on the subject of the rights 
of nationalities which has of late years become com- 
mon. It will, indeed, be observed that most men use 
such language mainly in judging other nations and 
other policies than their own. One of the most re- 
markable test cases of this kind which have occurred 
in our generation has been that of the United States. 
This great nation is one of the least military as well as 
one of the freest and most democratic in the world, 
and its representative writers, and sometimes even its 
legislative bodies, are fond of very absolute assertions 
of the right of revolution and the inalienable supre- 
macy of the popular will. Yet in its own acquisitions 
the American Republic has never adopted the principle 
of plebiscite. Texas was admitted into the Union by 
a treaty with a State which was considered indepen- 
dent ; Upper California was conquered from Mexico ; 
'Ne^Y Mexico was acquired by purchase ; Loui^iena was 
purchased from Napoleon in 1803 ; Florida was ac- 
quired by treaty with Spain in 1821 ; but in no one 
of these cases were the people consulted by a popular 
vote.i 

' See an article by Professor Lieber on Plebiscites, Revue de 
Droit International^ iii. 139-45. 



484 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

But most significant of all was the attitude assumed 
by the Federal Government in dealing with the seces- 
sion of the South. Long before that secession some of 
the best observers had clearly pointed out how the in- 
fluence of climate^, and much more the special type of 
industry and character which slavery produced, had 
already created a profound and lasting difference be- 
tween the North and the South. Both Madison and 
Story had foreseen that the great danger to the United 
States was the opposition between the Northern and 
Southern interests.^ Calhoun was so sensible of the 
difference that he proposed the establishment of two 
presidents, one for the free, and the other for the slave 
States, each with a veto on all national legislation.^ 
G-uizot ^ and Tocqueville ^ had both distinctly recog- 
nised the same truth. Though language and religion 
were the same, and though race was not widely differ- 
ent, two distinct nations had grown up, clearly sepa- 
rated in their merits and their defects, in character, 
manners, aspirations, and interests. 

After the election of President Lincoln the long- 
impending disruption came. The Southern States 
proclaimed the right of nationalities, demanded their 
independence, and proved their earnestness and their 
unanimity by arguments that were far more unequivo- 
cal than any doubtful plebiscite. For four long years 
they defended their cause on the battle-field with heroic 
courage, against overwhelming odds, and at the sacri- 



' Story's Commentaries on the sagacity of Guizot, when it is 

the Constitution of the United remembered that these lectures 

States^ ii. 177. were delivered between 1828 

2 Goldwin Smith's The Uni- and 1830) in the Hist, de la Ci- 
ted States^ p. 184. vilisation^ XVIII'"'^ le^on. 

^ See a very remarkable pas- ■* Democratie en Amerique^ 

sage (exceedingly creditable to torn. ii. ch. x. 



CH. V. THE WAR OF SECESSION 485 

fice of everything that men most desire. American 
and indeed European writers are accustomed to speak 
of the heroism of the American colonies in repudiating 
imperial taxation, and asserting and achieving their 
independence against all the force of Great Britain. 
But no one who looks carefully into the history of the 
American revolution, who observes the languor, the 
profound divisions, the frequent pusillanimity, the ab- 
sence of all strong and unselfisli enthusiasm that were 
displayed in great portions of the revolted colonies, 
and their entire dependence for success on foreign as- 
sistance, will doubt that the Southern States in the 
War of Secession exhibited an incomparably higher 
level of courage, tenacity, and self-sacrifice. No na- 
tion in the nineteenth century has maintained its na- 
tionhood with more courage and unanimity. But it 
was encountered with an equal tenacity, and with far 
greater resources/ and, after a sacrifice of life un- 
equalled in any war since the fall of Napoleon, the 
North succeeded in crushing the revolt and establish- 
ing its authority over the vanquished South. 

The struggle took place at a time when the recent 
emancipation of Italy had brought the doctrine of the 
rights of nationalities into the strongest relief. That 
doctrine had been accepted with enthusiasm by nearly 
all that was progressive in Europe, and nowhere more 
widely and more passionately than in England. It is 
curious and instructive to observe the attitude of Eng- 
lish opinion towards the contest that ensued. At the 
opening of the war the secession of the South was very 
generally blamed, and throughout the war a majority 
of the population remained, I believe, steadily on the 
side of the North. With the great body of the working 
classes the question was looked on simply as a question 
of slavery. The North was represented as fighting for 



486 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

the abolition of slavery ;, wliich it certainly was not, 
and as fighting to prevent the extension of slavery to the 
neAV territories, Avhich it certainly was ; and the cause 
of democracy was deemed insejDarably connected with 
the maintenance and the success of the great Eepublic 
of the AYest. But, on the other hand, a majority of 
the upper, and perhaps of the middle, classes soon 
came to sympathise decidedly Avith the South, and 
they were the classes who were most powerfully repre- 
sented in the press, in society, and in Parliament. 

Their motives were very various. Some were, no 
doubt, unworthy, or purely frivolous. There was the 
contrast, which was then often drawn, between ^ the 
gentlemen of the South ' and ' the shopkeepers of the 
I^orth.' There was jealousy of the increasing power 
of the United States, and of the increasing attraction 
of its form of government. There was resentment ex- 
cited by many unscrupulous acts and many insulting 
words of American statesmen and Avriters ; and the 
ignorance of American politics was so great that few 
Englishmen realised that the aggressive side of Ameri- 
can policy had been mainly due to Southern statesmen 
acting in Southern interests. The enmity which led 
the "United States to declare war against England in 
1812, at the time when England was engaged in a des- 
perate struggle for her existence and for tlie liberty 
of Europe against the overwhelming power of Napo- 
leon, was not wholly forgotten, ^ and the more recent 
sympathy of America with Russia during the Crimean 
war had, perhaps, still some slight influence. There 
were also powerful considerations of present English 
interests involved in the war. The North was strongly 



1 See some excellent remarks on this war in Goldwin Smith's 
United States^ pp. 166-74. 



CH, V. ENGLISH OPINION ON THE WAR 487 

Protectionist, and had begun the war by enacting an 
ultra-Protectionist tariff, while the South was the fer- 
vent champion of Free Trade, and it was from the 
South that the English cotton manufacture obtained 
its supplies, while the Northern blockade was reducing 
to extreme distress the population of Lancashire. Nor 
should we omit that ''sporting spirit^ which, it has 
been truly said, largely governs English interest in 
every foreign struggle. A comparatively small Power, 
encountering with consummate skill, with desperate 
courage, and for a long time with brilliant success, a 
gigantic but unwieldy and less skilful adversary, was 
certain to awake strong popular interest, quite irrespec- 
tive of the merits of the case. 

But it would be a grave injustice to attribute to such 
motives the great body of serious and deliberate opinion 
in England which desired the recognition of Southern 
independence and the cessation of the war. One large 
class emphatically condemned the original secession ; 
but they either believed, with most experienced Euro- 
pean statesmen, that the final subjugation of the South 
was impossible, and that the prolongation of the war 
was, in consequence, a mere useless waste of life, or 
that, if the South were finally subjugated, it would 
reproduce in America that most lamentable of all Eu- 
ropean spectacles, the spectacle of a subjugated Poland. 
Another large class believed that, on the principle of 
the American Constitution, the South was acting with- 
in its constitutional rights. They contended that when 
the separate States agreed on carefully defined condi- 
tions to enter into a bond of union, they never meant 
to surrender the right, which they had so lately vindi- 
cated against G-reat Britain, of seceding from it if the 
main body of their citizens desired it. This was the 
doctrine of Calhoun, and it was supported by a great 



488 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

weight both of argument and authority. There were 
some who^ like Sir Cornewali Lewis^ detested slavery, 
but who contended that the differences between North 
and South were so grave that separation was the only 
solution^ and that it would ultimately prove a great 
blessing to America, as well as to the world, if the 
^N'orthern States developed as a separate republic, un- 
tainted by the deteriorating influences of negro slavery 
and a tropical climate.^ But the strongest argument 
on this side was the doctrine of the rights of nationali- 
ties. I can well remember how the illustrious histo- 
rian, Mr. Grrote, whose political leanings were strongly 
democratic, and who, at the same time, always formed 
his opinions with an austere independence and integ- 
rity, was accustomed to speak on the subject, and how 
emphatically he dissented from the views of Mill and 
of a large proportion of those with whom he usually 
acted. He could not, he said, understand how those 
who had been so lately preaching in the most unquali- 
fied terms that all large bodies of men had an absolute, 
unimpeachable, indefeasible right to choose for them- 
selves their form of government, and that the growing 
recognition of this right was one of the first conditions 
of progress and liberty, could support or applaud the 
Federal Government in imposing on the Southern 
States a government which they detested, and in over- 
riding by force their evident and unquestionable desire. 
The inconsistency Avas real and flagrant, and the atti- 
tude of the ]S"orth, and of its supporters in Europe, 
could only be justified on the ground that the right 
of nationalities was not the absolute, unlimited thing 
which it had been customary to assert. In the North- 



' See a letter by Sir Cornewali Lewis prefixed to his Adminis- 
tratiojis of Great Britain^ p. 19. 



CH. V. RESULTS OF THE WAR 489 

ern States public opinion never faltered. Before the 
war began, it is true, there were some men, among 
whom Horace Greeley was conspicuous, who main- 
tained that if the Soathern States generally desired to 
secede they ought not to be prevented ; and there were 
many men who throughout the war tried to persuade 
themselves that a strong unionist sentiment was latent 
in the South. But the question of submitting the in- 
tegrity of the Republic to a popular vote in the several 
States was never entertained, though there was a pro- 
posal, which was defeated by the Eepublican party, of 
submitting to a direct popular vote a compromise about 
slavery which might have averted the war.^ It was at 
once felt that the question at issue was a question of 
national preservation, to which all other considerations 
must be subordinated, and the best men maintained 
that, by preserving the integrity of the republic, even 
against the wishes of an immense section of the people, 
they were most truly serving the interests of humanity. 
Three fatal consequences would have followed the tri- 
umph of the South. Slavery would have been ex- 
tended through vast territories where it did not hitherto 
prevail. A precedent of secession would have been ad- 
mitted which, sooner or later, would have broken up the 
United States into several different Powers. And as 
these Powers would have many conflicting interests, the 
European military system, which the New World had 
happily escaped, would have grown up in America, with 
all the evils and all the dangers that follow in its train. 
The judgment of the North was justified by the 
event, and this great struggle added one more to the 
many conspicuous instances of the fallibility of politi_ 



1 This was the Crittenden 150, 254-67. See, too, on 
compromise. See Rhodes's His- Greeley's opinion, pp. 140-42. 
tory of the United States, iii. 



490 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

cal predictions. The overwhelming majority of the 
most sagacious politicians in Europe believed^ either 
that the North would never attempt to restrain by 
force the Southern States if they desired to secede ; or 
that an armed revolt of many entire States^ guided by 
their legislatures^, could not possibly be suppressed ; 
or that, if it were suppressed, it could only be through 
a general rising of the enslaved negroes, which they 
anticipated as one of the most certain consequences of 
the prolongation of the war. Each one of these pre- 
dictions was signally and absolutely falsified. The 
speedy and complete acquiescence of the defeated South 
in the result of the war was no less surprising to Euro- 
pean statesmen ; while the fact that the cotton pro- 
duced in the South by free labour greatly exceeds that 
which was j^roduced by slavery/ shows that the South- 
ern belief that utter and imminent ruin must fol- 
low abolition was an absolute delusion. How different 
might have been the course of American history, how 
much bloodshed and misery might have been spared, if, 
even at the last moment, the policy proposed by Presi- 
dent Lincoln in 1862 had been accepted, and the slave 
States had agreed to gradual enfranchisement, receiv- 
ing Government bonds to the full value of their slaves ! "^ 
The regeneration of Italy had preceded the contest 
in America, and, more than any other event, it gave 
popularity to the doctrine of the rights of nationalities. 
It was one of the most genuine of national movements, 
and very few who were young men when it took place. 



' See some remarkable figures ed that of the last twenty years 

on tliis subject in Mr. Rhodes's of slavery by no less than 65-3 

History of the United States per cent. 

from 'the Compromise of 1850 "^Tlhodes'sIIistotyoftheUni- 

i. 314. Tlie annual average ted States from the Compromise 

produce of cotton in the South of 1850, iii. G34-35 ; Annual 

between 18(55 and 1880 exceed- Register, 1862, p. 231. 



CH. V. THE REGENERATION OF ITALY 491 

still fewer of those who, like the writer of these lines, 
then lived much in Italy, can have failed to catch the 
enthusiasm which it inspired. Though some provinces 
sacrificed much, there was no province in which the 
Italian cause did not command the support of over- 
whelming majorities, and though two great wars and 
an overwhelming debt were the cost, the unity of Italy 
was at last achieved. The mingled associations of a 
glorious past and of a noble present, the genuine and 
disinterested enthusiasm that so visibly pervaded the 
great mass of the Italian people, the genius of Cavour, 
the romantic character and career of Garibaldi, and the 
inexpressible charm and loveliness of the land which 
was now rising into the dignity of nationhood, all con- 
tributed to make the Italian movement unlike any 
other of our time. It was the one moment of nine- 
teenth-century history when politics assumed some- 
thing of the character of poetry. 

The glamour has now faded, and, looking back upon 
the past, we can more calmly judge the dubious ele- 
ments that mingled with it. One of them was the 
manner in which the annexation of jN"aples was accom- 
plished. The expedition of Garibaldi to Sicily con- 
sisted of so few men, and could have been so easily 
crushed if it had encountered any real popular resist- 
ance, that it scarcely forms an exception to the sponta- 
neous character of the movement towards unity. But 
the absolutely unprovoked invasion of Naples by Pied- 
montese troops, which took place without any declara- 
tion of war when the Neapolitan forces had rallied at 
Gaeta, and when the Garibaldian forces were in danger 
of defeat, was a grave violation of international obliga- 
tions and of the public law and order of Europe, and 
it can only be imperfectly palliated by the fact that 
similar interventions at the invitation of a sovereign 



492 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

and in the interests of despotism had not been iineom- 
mon. 

Much, the same thing may be said of the subsequent 
invasion of Kome, and in this case another and still 
graver consideration Avas involved. A great Catholic 
interest here confronted the purely national move- 
ment. In the opinion of the head of the Catholic 
Churchy and in the opinion of the great body of de- 
vout Catholics throughout the world, the independence 
of the head of the Church could only be maintained 
if he remained the temporal sovereign of his diocese ; 
and there was therefore a cosmopolitan interest of the 
highest order at issue. The possession of Eome and 
the adjoining territory to the sea would have met the 
Catholic requirement for the independence of the 
Pope, and it was urged by men w^ho had a warm gene- 
ral sympathy with the right of nations to choose their 
rulers, that in this case the less must yield to the 
greater, and that, in the interest of the whole Catho- 
lic population throughout the world, the small popula- 
tion of Eome and the adjoining territory must be 
content with a position which was in most respects 
privileged and honourable, and forego their claim to 
unite with Italy. 

Gioberti had taught that the true solution of the 
Roman question Avas an Italian federation under the 
presidency of the Pope, and at the Peace of Villafranca 
Napoleon III. and the Emperor of Austria agreed to do 
their utmost to carry out this scheme. It was, how- 
ever, from the first doomed to failure. One part of it 
was the restoration of the dispossessed princes, which 
could only be effected by force. Another was the in- 
troduction of Austria, as the ruler of Venetia, into the 
confederation, which excited the strongest Italian an- 
tipathy. ' The large measure of reform ' which the 



CH. V. THE ROMAN QUESTION 493 

two Emperors agreed to use tlieir influence to obtain 
from the Pope proved wholly unacceptable to that 
potentate, while the honorary presidency of the con- 
federation, to which he did not object, was equally un- 
acceptable to Italy. Italian feeling flowed irresistibly 
towards unity, and the great prestige of Eome, which 
alone could command an indisputable ascendency among 
the Italian cities, marked her out as the natural capi- 
tal. It is, however, not altogether impossible that 
some compromise with the Catholic interest might 
have been effected if there had been any real intelli- 
gence at the Vatican. Unfortunately, in this quarter 
incapacity and obstinacy reigned supreme. The Pope 
had, it is true, a cardinal-minister who possessed to an 
eminent degree the superficial talents that enable a 
statesman to write clever despatches and to conduct 
skilfully a diplomatic interview ; but neither he nor 
his master showed the smallest real power of governing 
men, of measuring wisely the forces of their time, and 
of averting revolution by skilful, timely, and searching 
reform. 

The part which was played by England in these 
transactions was very remarkable. Though she had not 
sacrificed a man or a guinea in the cause, she inter- 
vened actively and powerfully at every stage of its de- 
velopment ; she had always an alternative policy to 
propose, and in nearly every case this policy ultimately 
prevailed. Lord John Eussell conducted her foreign 
policy, and he was warmly supported in the Cabinet by 
Lord Palmerston. He dissented strongly from the 
leading articles of the Peace of Villafranca, and clearly 
pointed out the impossibility of carrying them into 
effect. He urged persistently that the Italian people 
should be left to form their own Governments freely, 
without the intervention of either France or Austria. 



494 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

He was the only statesman who officially approved of 
the Piedmontese mvasion of Naples, which he defended 
by a quotation from Vattel, and by the part played by 
William III. in the English revolution of 1688. He 
steadily advocated the withdrawal of French troops 
from Eome, and the treatment of the Roman question 
as a purely Italian one. He exasperated foreign states- 
men not a little by his constant lectures on ' the right 
which belongs to the people of every independent State 
to regulate their own internal government/ and on the 
iniquity of every foreign interference with their clearly 
expressed will. ' With regard to the general question 
of interference/ he wrote, ' in the internal affairs of 
other countries, Her Majesty^'s Government holds that 
non-intervention is the principle on which the Govern- 
ments of Europe should act, only to be departed from 
when the safety of a foreign State or its permanent 
interests require it."* ' 

At the same time, in the true spirit of an English 
Whig, he refused to lay any stress on the verdict of 
universal suffrage as expressed by a plebiscite, and re- 
garded the regular vote of duly authorised representa- 
tive bodies as the only decisive and legitimate expression 
of the voice of the people. Speaking of the annexation 
to the Italian State of Naples, Sicily, Umbria and the 
Marches, he wrote to Sir J. Hudson : ' The votes by 
universal suffrage which have taken place in those 
kingdoms and provinces appear to Her Majesty^s Go- 
vernment to have little validity. These votes are noth- 
ing more than a formality following upon acts of 
popular insurrection, or successful invasion, or upon 
treaties, and do not in themselves imply any indepen- 



' See the despatches on Italy in the second volume of Lord 
Russell's Speeches and Despatches. 



cu. V. SUCCESS OF ENGLISH POLICY 495 

dent exercise of the will of the nation in whose name 
they are given. Should, however, the deliberate act 
of the representatives of the several Italian States . . . 
constitute those States into one State in the form of a 
constitutional monarchy, a new question will arise/ ^ 

It is probable that the emphasis with which Lord 
John Russell dwelt upon this distinction was largely 
due to the fact that the annexation of Savoy to France 
had been sanctioned and justified by a popular vote. 
The British Government treated this vote and the pre- 
tended popular wish with complete disdain, as a mere 
device of the two Governments concerned, for the pur- 
pose of veiling the character of a secret and dangerous 
intrigue ; and Lord John Russell denounced the whole 
transaction in language which might easily have led to 
war.^ 

This policy undoubtedly represented the predominant 
public opinion of Great Britain, and it was eminently 
successful. In the very critical state of Italian affairs, 
and amid the strongly expressed disapprobation of the 
great Continental Powers, the steady countenance and 
moral support of England gave both force and respecta- 
bility to the Italian cause, and broke the isolation to 
which it would have otherwise been condemned. The 
obligation was fully felt and gratefully acknowledged ; 
and there is a striking contrast between the extreme 
popularity of England and the extreme unpopularity of 
France in Italy within a few months, it may be almost 
said within a few weeks, after Solferino. The promise 
that Italy should be freed ' from the Alps to the Adri- 
atic,' and uncontrolled by any foreign Power, was fal- 
sified by the Peace of Villafranca, which left Austria 



^ Lord J. Russell to Sir J. ^ ^Valpole's Life of Russell^ 

Hudson, Jan. 21, 1861. ii. 319-21. 



496 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

the mistress of Venetia^ and if its provisions had been 
carried out would have made her the dominant power 
in the peninsula. Imperious considerations of French 
interests might be truly alleged to justify this unex- 
pected peace, but it is not surprising that it should 
have sent a thrill of exasperation through the Italian 
people. The claim of the Emperor on the gratitude of 
the Italians was still further weakened when he de- 
manded Nice and Savoy as a payment for his services, 
and his attempt to support two great but essentially 
incompatible interests by maintaining with French 
bayonets the dominion of the Pope at Kom.e, while he 
acquiesced, though slowly and reluctantly, in the an- 
nexation of the other portions of Italy to the new 
kingdom, and in the abandonment of his favourite 
scheme of an Italian federation, had the very natural 
effect of exciting anger and distrust on both sides. 
England, on the other hand, had but one voice, and 
her simple policy of leaving Italy, without any foreign 
intervention, to construct her own Government fully 
met the Italian desires. 

History has certainly not said her last word about 
Napoleon III., a sovereign who has of late years been 
as extravagantly depreciated as he was once extrava- 
gantly extolled. More justice will one day be done to 
his manifest and earnest attempts, under circumstances 
of extreme difficulty, to reconcile a great and real 
Catholic interest, which was very dear to a large sec- 
tion of his subjects, with his earnest desire to free 
Italy from foreign control. The obstacles he had to 
encounter were enormous : the stubborn resistance of 
the Papal Court to the reforms and compromises he 
recommended ; the furious indignation of French Ca- 
tholic opinion at his acquiescence in the annexation of 
Romagna, Umbria, and the Marches ; the irresistible 



CH. V. NAPOLEON III. 497 

torrent of Italian opinion impelling Italian policy in 
the direction of unity. The great Continental conn- 
tries disapproved of his policy as unduly liberal^ while, 
on opposite grounds, English disapprobation greatly 
increased his difficulties. He desired manifestly and 
sincerely to withdraw his troops from Rome, if he could 
do so without destroying the temporal power. At one 
moment he had almost attained his end, and the evacu- 
ation was actually ordered, when Garibaldi's invasion 
of Sicily threw the South of Italy into a flame, and 
changed the whole aspect of affairs. Projects for estab- 
lishing a neutral zone under European guarantee ; for 
garrisoning Rome with Neapolitan troops ; for reor- 
ganising the Papal army on such a scale that it might 
be sufficient to secure the independence of Rome, were 
constantly passing through his mind. At one time he 
proposed a congress to deal with the question. At 
another he authorised and inspired a pamphlet main- 
taining that the city of Rome alone, without any other 
territory, would be sufficient to secure the independence 
of the Pope. At another he ordered inquiries to be 
made into the government of the city of London by the 
Lord Mayor and Corporation, under the strange notion 
that this might furnish some clue for a double Govern- 
ment at Rome. The secret despatches of his minister, 
which have now been published, furnish a curious and 
vivid picture of the extreme difficulties of his task, but 
also, I think, of the sincerity with which, amid many 
hesitations and perplexities, he endeavoured to accom- 
plish it.^ 

History will also pronounce upon the policy of Eng- 
land during this crisis, and, if I am not mistaken, it 
will be less eulogistic than contemporary English opin- 



1 Thouvenel, Le Secret de VEmpereur. 



498 DEMOCRACY a:nd liberty ch. v. 

ion. It will scarcely, I think, approve of that strange 
and famous despatch in which Lord John Russell jus- 
tified the Piedmontese invasion of Naples, and it may 
well pronounce the Eoman policy of England to have 
heen an unworthy one, though it was both popular 
and successful. This question was pre-eminently one 
on which a great and cosmopolitan Catholic interest 
had to be weighed against a question of nationality, 
and in such a dispute the intervention of a Protestant 
Power seems to me to have been wholly unjustifiable. 
The bitter resentment it excited among the Irish 
Catholics was, in my opinion, not without foundation. 
Whether the unity of Italy has been to the Italian 
people the blessing that we once believed may also be 
greatly doubted. The political movements and combi- 
nations that make most noise in the world, and excite 
the largest measure of enthusiasm, are often not those 
which affect most deeply or most beneficially the real 
happiness of men. The elements of true happiness 
are to be found in humbler spheres, and are to be esti- 
mated by other tests. Italy has had many good for- 
tunes, but the peace which left her with the acquisition 
of Lombardy, and the certainty before her of another 
great war for the acquisition of Yenetia, was one of the 
chief disasters in her history. Proposals, it is true, 
were then circulated, with some authority, for the sale 
of Venetia by Austria to Italy, and if such a sale had 
been effected the whole course of recent European 
history might have been changed. Italy might have 
been saved from financial ruin, and the financial posi- 
tion of Austria would have been enormously improved. 
It would have been possible for Austria to have carried 
out both more promptly and more efficiently her trans- 
formation into a really constitutional empire ; and as 
Italy would have had no motive for joining with her 



CH. V. 



TAXATION IN ITALY 499 



enemies, the War of 1866 might either have been 
averted, or have ended differently. 

But a false point of honour, in which the Austrian 
Emperor undoubtedly represented the prevalent feeling 
of his subjects, prevented such a cession, and opened a 
new chapter of events almost equally disastrous to 
Austria and to Italy. In the terrible years of prepara- 
tion for a great war the debt of Italy rose rapidly to 
unmanageable dimensions, and the dangers, the re- 
sponsibilities, the gigantic army and navy of a great 
Power, soon created for her a burden she was wholly 
unable to bear. Most of the Italian States, before the 
war of independence began, were among the most 
lightly taxed in Europe, but no other European coun- 
try, in proportion to its means, is now so heavily taxed 
as Italy. Those who have observed the crushing 
weight with which this excessive taxation falls, not 
only on the upper and middle classes of the Italian peo- 
ple, but also on the food and industry of the very poor, 
the grinding poverty it has produced, and the immi- 
nent danger of national bankruptcy that hangs over 
Italy, may well doubt whether her unity has not been 
too dearly purchased, and whether ISTapoleon's scheme 
of an Italian federation might not, after all, have 
proved the wiser. A very competent writer has com- 
puted that, in the years of perfect peace between 1871 
and 1893, the taxation of Italy has increased more than 
30 per cent. ; that the national debt has been increased 
in twenty-three years of peace by about four milliards 
of francs, or 160 millions of pounds ; and that the inte- 
rest of this debt, without counting the communal debts 
or the floating debt, absorbs one-third of the whole 



1 See Geffcken's article on the ' War Chests of Europe,' Nine- 
teenth Century^ August 1894. 



500 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

It has been truly claimed^ however, for Italy that 
she represents the triumph of the doctrine of nationali- 
ties in its best form. Nowhere else do so many ele- 
ments of nationality concur — language, religion, a 
clearly defined geographical unity, a common litera- 
ture, and common sentiments. In German unity 
genuine sympathy bore a great part, but in some por- 
tions of the Empire force alone carried out the policy. 
In some quarters race is represented as the most essen- 
tial element of nationality, and the doctrine of nation- 
ality has blended closely with a doctrine of races which 
seems destined to be a great disturbing influence in the 
affairs of the world. ^ 

The unity of the Latin race, to be established partly 
by absorptions, and partly by alliances in which Trance 
should hold the ruling place, w^as a favourite French 
doctrine in the time of Napoleon III., though it has 
now greatly faded, owing to the profound antipathies 
that divide France and Italy. Michel Chevalier, among 
others, powerfully advocated it ; it was given as one 
of the chief reasons for the unfortunate expedition to 
Mexico ; it gave colour to French aspirations to do- 
minion both in Belgium and French Switzerland ; and 
a school of writers arose who represented the establish- 
ment of an equilibrium between the great races as the 
true balance of power, the future basis of international 
politics. The unity of the Teutonic race has had cor- 
responding adherents in Germany, and their eyes have 
been greedily cast, not only towards Austria and 
towards Alsace, but also towards Holland, towards the 
German provinces of Belgium, and towards the Baltic 
provinces. The Panslavist movement is the latest, 
and perhaps the most dangerous, on the stage, and it 



See Revue de Droit IntemationaL iii. 458-63. 



CH. V. DOCTRINE OF RACES 501 

seeks the disintegration not only of Turkey, but of 
Austria. It must be observed, too, that in proportion 
to the new stress given to the claims of nationality 
comes an increased desire among rulers to extirpate in 
their dominions all alien national types, whether of 
race, or language, or creed, which may some day be 
called into active existence. 

Few things are more curious to observe than the 
conflicting tendencies which are, in the same period of 
history, drawing nations in diametrically opposite di- 
rections. The tendency to great agglomerations and 
larger political unities has in our day been very evi- 
dent. Railroads, and the many other influences produc- 
ing a more rapid interchange of ideas and commerce, 
and more cosmopolitan habits and manners, act strong- 
ly in this direction ; and the military and naval sys- 
tems of our time throw an overwhelming power into 
the hands of the great nations. On the other hand, 
there has been in many forms a marked tendency to 
accentuate distinct national and local types. 

It has been very clearly shown in national languages. 
As late as the days of Frederick the Great, French had 
a complete ascendency, even at the Prussian Court ; 
and long after that date it seemed in many conntries 
likely to displace all local languages in the common 
usage of the upper classes. Nearly everywhere this^ 
tendency has been checked, and national languages 
now fully maintain their ascendency. The late Queen 
Sophie of the Netherlands was accustomed to relate 
that, at the time of her marriage in 1839, some of her 
counsellors told her that it was scarcely necessary for 
her to learn Dutch, as the use of it was so rapidly 
passing away among the upper classes in Holland ; but 
she lived to see that usage constant and universal. It 
was, I believe, only under Nicliolas that Russian super- 



502 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

seded Frencli as tlio Court language at St. Petersburg, 
and, according to competent judges, the same change 
has in the present generation extended widely through 
all Eussian society. In Belgium there has been a 
marked and most significant movement for maintain- 
ing the Flemish language and Flemish nationality ; a 
similar tendency prevails in Bohemia and Hungary, 
and even at home it may be seen in the greatly in- 
creased stress laid upon the Welsh language. The war 
of 1870 strengthened it, and French has lost much of 
its cosmopolitan character as the language of diplo- 
macy, while no other single language has taken its 
place. At no previous period, I suppose, has so large 
an amount of interest and research been devoted to 
the study of local customs, literatures, traditions and 
antiquities. Education, if it widens interests, also con- 
tributes to kindle political life in small areas, and the 
extension of the suffrage and of local government, and 
perhaps still more the growth of a local press, have all 
their effect in accentuating local divisions and awaken- 
ing local aspirations. The vast military systems of the 
Continent may, perhaps, in some degree divert the 
minds of the great disciplined masses from internal and 
constitutional politics, and they weaken the lines of 
provincial differences, but they also bring into stronger 
and sharper relief national distinctions and national 
antagonisms. 

Among the problems that weigh heavily on the states- 
men of our age, few are more serious than those of 
reconciling local and particularist aspirations with the 
maintenance of imperial strength and unity, and with 
the stability of European peace. In all such questions 
many various, and often conflicting, circumstances 
must be considered, and no general and inflexible rule 
can be laid down. England, in 1864, made a remarka- 



CH. V. CONCESSIONS TO NATIONALITY 503 

ble concession to the rights of nationalities when, in 
response to a strongly expressed local wish, she aban- 
doned her protectorate over the Ionian Isles and per- 
mitted their annexation to Greece. She certainly would 
not have acted in the same way if Malta, or Ireland, or 
some other vital portion of her Empire had demanded 
to be annexed to a foreign Power. Every great empire 
is obliged, in the interest of its imperial unity, and in 
the interest of the public order of the world, to impose 
an inflexible veto on popular movements in the direc- 
tion of disintegration, however much it may endeavour 
to meet local wishes by varying laws and institutions 
and compromises. Nations, too, differ very widely in 
the strengtli of their national types, in their power of 
self-government, in their ^oower of governing others, in 
their power of assimilating or reconciling alien types. 
There are cases where the destruction of an old na- 
tionality, or even of a natioiiality which had never 
fully existed, but had been prematurely arrested in its 
growth, leaves behind it in large classes hatreds which 
rankle for centuries. There are other cases where, in 
a few years, a complete fusion is effected, where every 
scar of the old wound is effaced, where all distinctions 
are obliterated, or where they subsist ojily in healthy 
differences of type, tendency, and capacity, which add 
to the resources without in any degree impairing the 
strength and harmony of the nation. There are cases 
where an extension of local representative institutions 
will amply satisfy local aspirations and appease local 
discontents, and where such institutions are certain to 
be justly and moderately used. There are other cases 
where they would be infallibly turned into instru- 
ments for revolution, plunder, and oppression, where 
they would only increase dissension, and perhaps lead 
to civil war. 



504 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. v. 

All these elements of the problem must, in each 
separate case, be duly estimated. On the whole, the 
doctrine of the absolute and indefeasible right of na- 
tionalities to determine their own form of government 
seems to me now less prominent among the political 
ideas of the world than it was in 1848, and at the period 
of the emancipation of Italy. Both England and 
America have learnt, from their own experience, the 
dangers that may spring from its too unqualified asser- 
tion ; Eastern Europe has shown how easily it may be 
converted into an instrument of aggression and in- 
trigue ; and the institution of the plebiscite has been 
much discredited since the fall of the second French 
Empire. France was once the most ardent champion 
of tliis doctrine in its extreme form, partly, perhaps, 
because her own territory is singularly compact, homo- 
geneous, and well assimilated ; but since 1870 her as- 
pirations and alliances have carried her in very different 
directions. At the same time, the movement towards 
international Socialism, which has spread widely through 
the working classes of the Continent, is wholly alien to 
the idea of nationality, apjoeals to a different kind of 
enthusiasm, and seeks to divide the world by other 
lines. The chief apparent exception has been the 
greatly increased importance which the Irish Home 
Rule movement has assumed since the Irish suffrage 
Avas so extended as to give an overwhelming power to 
the lowest orders, since Parnell organised his agitation, 
and since Mr. Gladstone accepted his demands. But 
the nation, in 1886 and 1895, condemned this policy 
with an emphasis that it is impossible to mistake ; nor 
would the movement in Ireland ever have attained its 
formidable magnitude if it had not allied itself with 
motives and interests very different from the pure na- 
tionalism of Grattan and of Davis. 



CH. VI. DIFFERING CONCEPTIONS OF LIBERTY 505 



CHAPTER VI 

DEMOCRACY AND RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 

There are few subjects upon which mankind in dif- 
ferent ages and countries have differed more widely 
than in their conceptions of liberty, and in the kinds 
of liberty which they principally value and desire. 
Even in our own day, and among civilised nations, 
these differences are enormously great. There are vast 
iiountries where the forms of liberty to which the Eng- 
lish race are most passionately attached, and which 
they have attained by the most heroic and persistent 
efforts, would appear either worthless or positively evil. 
There are nations who would recoil with horror from 
the unlimited liberty of religious discussion and pro- 
pagandism which has become the very life-breath of 
modern Englishmen ; who care little or nothing for the 
unrestricted right of public meeting and political writ- 
ing ; who deem complete commercial liberty, with its 
corollary of unrestricted competition, an evil rather 
than a good ; who regard the modern relaxations of 
the restrictions of creed or sex in employments and ap- 
pointments as subversive of the best moral elements 
in the community, and in whose eyes an Englishman's 
absolute right to bequeath his property as he wills is 
the source of enormous injustice. In some Western, 
and in nearly all Eastern nations, good administration 
is far more valued than representation, and provided 
men can obtain a reasonable amount of order, peace, 



506 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

security^ and prosperity at a moderate charge, provided 
tlieir liabits and religions are undisturbed, they care 
very little by Avhom or in what way their rulers are ap- 
pointed, and gladly dismiss the whole subject of poli- 
tics from their thoughts. 

On the other hand, numerous restraints, prohibitions 
and punishments exist in England, and are strongly 
supported by English opinion, which would in other 
zones of thought be bitterly resented. It would seem, 
in many countries, a monstrous tyranny that poor 
parents should be compelled to send their children to 
school, and should be fined by a magistrate if they kept 
them at home in times when they most needed their 
services. The English Sunday wears to man}^ Conti- 
nental minds at least as repulsive an aspect as the Star 
Chamber would wear to a modern Englishman. That 
a man who wished to work on that day should not be 
allowed to do so ; that a struggling sho23keej)er should 
be forbidden, if he desired it, to open his shop ; that a 
farmer should be prevented from reaping his own har- 
vest when every fine day is of vital consequence to his 
interests ; that poor men should be excluded by law on 
their one holiday from their place of meeting and re- 
freshment ; that nearly all forms of amusement, and 
even most of the public picture galleries, museums, 
and libraries should be closed on the day on which they 
could give the widest pleasure, would seem to many 
quite as serious an infringement of liberty as those acts 
against which Magna Charta and the Bill of Rights 
were directed. 

A severity of censorship is maintained in England, 
with the full sanction of public opinion, over theatres 
and music-halls, and over most forms of gambling, 
which in some parts of the Continent would excite 
at least as much discontent as a censorship of the 



CH. VI. RESTRICTIONS AND PROHIBITIONS 507 

Press. To a man of Spanish bloody a legal prohibition 
of bull-fights would probably appear quite as oppres- 
sive as a restriction of his electoral rights, and a very 
similar sentiment has of late years grown up in a great 
part of the South of France. If this example may be 
thought an extreme one, it is at least certain that on 
the whole subject of the treatment of animals English 
opinion and practice differ enormously from the gene- 
ral Continental standard in the number and the severity 
of their restrictions. In no other country are scien- 
tific experiments on living animals restrained by law, 
and in most countries public opinion would be wholly 
against such legislation. A special Act of Parliament 
makes it in England a criminal offence to yoke a dog 
to a cart/ which in Holland, Belgium, and many other 
very civilised countries is done every day, without ex- 
citing the smallest disapprobation. The manufacture 
of ' j)^te de foie gras,^ which is accomplished by arti- 
ficially producing a disease, is an important industry in 
France and Germany ; it would probably be suppressed 
in England by law, and what in other countries is con- 
sidered the very ordinary process of dishorning cattle 
has been pronounced, though with some conflict of 
judicial opinion, to be illegal. 

Laws against wanton cruelty to animals exist in most 
countries, but in their scope, their stringency, and above 
all in their administration, there is an immense differ- 
ence between England and the Continent. An amount 
of over-driving, over-working, and other ill-treatment 
of animals ^ which in most countries — certainly in most 



' 17 & 18 Vict. c. 60, s. 2. be arrested and brought before 

^ ^.^., England is, I suppose, a magistrate because she has 

the only country in Europe carried her fowls to market 

where a peasant woman may with their heads downwards. 



508 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY . ch. vi. 

Soiitliern countries — does not excite any reprobation or 
attention is in England punishable by law. In France 
there is the well-known G-rammont law, which .was en- 
acted in 1850, for the protection of animals. But it is 
confined to domestic animals which are ' publicly and 
abusively ' treated : it is clearly laid down by French 
lawyers that it gives no inquisitorial power of interfer- 
ing with what is done in a private house, or court, or 
garden ; it can only be put in force by public func- 
tionaries, and its penalties range from a fine of 5 to 15 
francs, or a maximum sentence of five days of prison.^ 
In England the corresponding penalty is two months^ 
imprisonment, there is no exception of acts done in 
private houses, and private persons may put the law 
in force. Few societies are more warmly supported in 
England than one which annually prosecutes about 
6,000 persons, chiefly very poor men, for offences 
against animals, the imimense majority of which would 
be on the Continent unpunished, and probably even 
unblamed. At the same time, there are few countries 
in the civilised world in which the killing of ani- 
mals enters so largely as in England into the amuse- 
ments of the upper and middle classes of society, and 
lines of distinction are drawn Avhich, though fully re- 
cognised by English opinion, would in many countries 
be resented. The magistrate who sends a poor man to 
prison for taking part in a cock-fight or a dog-fight, 
for baiting a badger or worrying a cat, very probably 
protects his own game by setting steel traps for vermin 
and strychnine for stray dogs, and takes part without 
reproach in a coursing match, a stag hunt, or a battue. 
A similar contrast may be found in other fields. In 

^The questions raised in con- A. Guilbon, Des mauvais traite- 
nection ^vith the Grammont law ments envers les animaux do- 
have been treated in full by N. mestiques. 



CH. VI. RESTRICTIONS AND PROHIBITIONS 509 

the English marriage law there is at least one restric- 
tion on the contraction of marriages, and there are 
many restrictions on the dissolution of unhappy mar- 
riages which nearly all other Protestant countries have 
abolished. The licensing laws, the factory laws, the 
laws on sanitation, bristle with restrictions and penal 
clauses that in many other countries are unknown, and 
there are great communities in which the law which 
treats attempted suicide as a crime would be deemed 
a violation of natural freedom. Political freedom and 
social freedom do not necessarily go together, and it 
will often be found that restraints and prohibitions 
are being multiplied in one department while they are 
being relaxed or abolished in another. It is probable 
that the lives of men were more variously and severely 
restricted under the censorship of the Roman republic 
than under the tyranny of the O^sars ; under the rule 
of the Puritans during the Commonwealth, or in Scot- 
land and l^ew England, than in many of the despotisms 
of the Continent. 

These few examples may illustrate the variety and 
the difficulty of the subject, and it may not be a use- 
less thing to take stock of our present conceptions 
of liberty, to observe the changes that are passing over 
them, and to ascertain in what directions modern legis- 
lation and opinion are realising, enlarging, or abridg- 
ing them. 

One most important form of liberty, which in our 
generation has been almost completely achieved, both 
in England and in most foreign countries, has been 
religious liberty. In England, at least, complete 
liberty of worship and of opinion had been practically 
attained in 1813, when Unitarians at last received the 
legal recognition which had long been granted to other 
Dissenters. It is true that, if we looked only on the 



510 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

letter of the law, this statement would not be absolute- 
ly true. A number of wholly obsolete laws directed 
against Roman Catholics, or against those who ab- 
stained from the Anglican service, were only repealed 
in 1844 and 1846.^ IJnrepealed clauses in the Catholic 
Emancipation Act of 1829 even now make it an offence 
punishable by banishment for life for Jesuits, or mem- 
bers of other male religious communities, to come into 
the kingdom, and for any person in England to join 
such bodies, or to introduce others into them;^ and 
an Act of William III. is still on the Statute Book, ac- 
cording to which, in the opinion of very competent 
lawyers, the gravest and most solid works impugning 
the Christian religion and the Divine authority of the 
Old and New Testaments might be made subjects for 
prosecutions.^ These laws, however, have become en- 
tirely obsolete, and it is not too much to say that every 
form of religious worship which does not directly of- 
fend morality, and every form of religious opinion 
which is expressed in serious and decent language, are, 
in England, perfectly unrestricted. 

The practice of the law is in this respect fully sup- 
ported by public opinion. No change in English life 
during the latter half of the nineteenth century is 
more conspicuous than the great enlargement of the 
range of permissible opinions on religious subjects. 
Opinions and arguments which not many years ago 
were confined to small circles and would have drawn 



' 7 & 8 Vict. c. 102 ; 9 & 10 were only required to register 

Vict. c. 59. themselves. A Secretary of 

^ 10 George IV. c. 7, ss. 28- State might also give other 
34. There was an exception in Jesuits a special license to re- 
favour of natural-horn suhjects main in England for not longer 
who had been Jesuits or mem- than six months, 
bers of other religious orders ^ Stephen's History of the 
before the Act passed, and who Criminal Law^ ii. 468-76. 



CH. VI. SIGNED ARTICLES 511 

down grave social penalties, have become tlie common- 
places of the drawing-room and of the boudoir. The 
first very marked change in this respect followed, I 
think, the publication in 1860 of the ' Essays and Re- 
views/ and the effect of this book in making the reli- 
gious questions which it discussed familiar to the great 
body of educated men was probably by far the most 
important of its consequences. The power and popu- 
larity of the works of Buckle and Eenan; the long 
controversies that followed Bishop Colenso's criticism 
on the Pentateuch ; the writings of Darwin, and their 
manifest bearing on the received theologies ; the 
gradual infiltration into England of the results that 
had been arrived at by the Biblical critics of Germany 
and Holland, have all had a powerful influence, and 
the tendency has been greatly accelerated by the fashion, 
which sprang up in England in 1865, of publishing 
magazines consisting of signed articles by men of most 
various and opposing opinions. The old type of maga- 
zine represented a single definite school of thought, 
and it was read chiefly by those who belonged to that 
school. The new type appeals to a much larger and 
more varied circle, and its editors soon discovered that 
few things were more acceptable to their readers than 
a full discussion by eminent men of the great problems 
of natural and revealed religion. Opinions the most 
conservative and the most negative appeared side by side, 
were read together, and are now habitually found in the 
drawing-rooms of men of the most different opinions. 

Custom so soon establishes its empire over men that 
Ave seldom realise the greatness and the significance of 
this change. Every Church — even the most intolerant 
one — seems to have accepted it in England. On hardly 
any subject has the Church of Rome been more impe- 
rative than in her efforts to prevent her members from 



512 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

coming in contact with any form of heterodox opinion. 
Many of my readers will probably remember how^ to 
the very end of the temporal power of the Pope^ Eng- 
lish newspapers and magazines at Eome were subject 
to a stringent censorship^ and continually arrived with 
whole passages carefully excised, lest anything incon- 
sistent with the doctrines of the Church should pene- 
trate into Rome, even in a foreign tongue and to a 
stranger community. In French Canada, where the 
old spirit of Catholicism probably retains a stronger 
hold over the people than in any other country, a 
stringent censorship of the Press is still maintained. 
In 18G9 there was a case, which excited much atten- 
tion in England, of a Canadian who was excommuni- 
cated and denied Christian burial because he had been 
a member of a Canadian institute which had refused to 
exclude from its library books and journals disapproved 
of by the Church. A pamphlet published by a leading 
member of that institute in defence of its policy was 
condemned in such terms that every Catholic who, 
after being properly warned, retained it in his house 
could only be absolved by the bishop or his vicars- 
general. As recently as 1892 a sentence was read in all 
the Canadian Catholic churches forbidding, under pen- 
alty of refusal of the Sacraments, any Catholic to print, 
sell, distribute, read, or possess two Catholic journals 
which had offended the bishop. Their offence appears 
to have been that they had published and commented 
on a gross instance of clerical immorality which had 
been clearly proved, and that one of them had proposed 
to publish '^Les Trois Mousquetaires ' of Alexandre 
Diimas.^ In England, there are probably few houses 

' Gold win Smith's Canada^ Tliere has been a more recent 
p. 15. See, too, a Canadian case of a Catholic bishop in 
book, Doutre, Ruines Clericales. Ireland excommunicating the 



OH. VI. PROGRESS OF RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 513 

of the Catholic gentry where periodicals may not be 
found in which men like Herbert Spencer and Huxley 
expound their views with perfect frankness. Among 
the contributors to these magazines there have been at 
least two cardinals and many other Catholic divines. 

Men will differ much about the good and evil result- 
ing from this fact ; but it at least indicates a great 
change of public feeling in the direction of religious 
liberty, and it is in the highest degree improbable 
that in England, and in most of the leading countries 
of the world, theological opinions could be again re- 
pressed on the ground of their theological error. It is 
possible, however, for religious expression and worship 
to be unfettered, but at the same time for its professors 
to be gravely injured by disqualifications and disabili- 
ties. In the full concession of political rights to Non- 
conforming bodies, England has been much behind 
some other nations. The United States led the way, 
and one of the articles of its Constitution declared in 
clear, noble, and comprehensive language, that ^ no 
religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to 
any office or public trust under the United States.' In 
the words of Judge Story, ' The Catholic and the Pro- 
testant, the Calvinist and the Arminian, the Jew and 
the infidel, may sit down at the common table of the 
national councils without any inquisition into their 
faith or mode of worship."^ In France, though gross 
religious intolerance accompanied and followed the 
Kevolution, the general principle of severing political 
privileges from theological beliefs was at least clearly 
laid down. In 1789 the National Assembly threw open 
all civil and military posts and privileges to Protestants, 
and in 1791 to Jews ; and, in spite of the many vicis- 

readers of a newspaper of which ' Story On the Constitution^ 

he disapproved. iii. 731. 

VOL. I. 33 



514 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

situdes which French goyernment afterwards experi- 
enced, these privileges were never seriously infringed. 
It was a significant fact that the Jew Cremieux was a 
member of the Provisional Government of 1848. The 
Belgian Constitution of 1831 followed the example of 
the United States, and gave Belgians of all creeds ab- 
solute religious freedom and full constitutional privi- 
leges. Prussia was and is a very conservative country, 
but in the Constitution of 1850 it was expressly pro- 
vided that civil and political rights were independent 
of religious beliefs. 

In England, it is somewhat humiliating to observe 
how slowly this constitutional equality was attained. 
By an Irish Act of 1793, and by English Acts of 1813 
and 1817, all ranks of the army and navy were gradu- 
ally opened to Catholics and Dissenters ; while the abo- 
lition of Test and Corporation Acts in 1828 placed 
Protestant Dissenters on an equality with the members 
of the Established Church in corporate and civil offices. 
Then followed the Catholic Emancipation Act of 1829, 
and in 1833 and 1838 Acts were carried by which mem- 
bers of religious bodies who objected to oaths were 
admitted on their affirmation into the House of Com- 
mons. The conflict about the emancipation of the 
Jews raged long and fiercely ; but in 1839 they were 
permitted to take oaths in the form that was binding 
on their consciences, in 1845 they were admitted into 
cor23orate offices, in 1858 they made their way into the 
House of Commons, and at a much later period a dis- 
tinguished living Jew has been raised to the peer- 
age and made Lord Lieutenant of his county. The 
admission, after a long struggle, to tlie House of 
Commons of an avowed atheist, in the person of Mr. 
Bradlaugh, completed the work of abolishing reli- 
gious disqualifications in England. 



> 



CH. VI. PROGRESS OP RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 515 

I do not include in the struggle for religious li- 
berty such measures as the abolition of compulsory 
Church rates, the disestablishment and disendow- 
ment of the Irish Church, the alterations that have 
been effected in the law of tithes. These seem to me 
to belong to a different category, and must be regarded 
as episodes in the conflict between the supporters and 
opponents of an established Church. Among the great 
achievements of religious liberty, however, may un- 
doubtedly be counted the important measure carried 
by Lord John Russell in 1836, enabling Dissenters to 
celebrate their marriages in their own chapels and by 
their own rites, and establishing a system of civil mar- 
riage for those who desired it, and also a comprehensive 
and secular system for the registration of births, deaths, 
and marriages. To the same class belongs the Act of 
1870 permitting scrupulous unbelievers, who rejected 
all forms of oath, to give evidence in the law courts on 
affirmation, the penalty of perjury being still retained 
as a protection against false witness. The measure of 
1880, also, which, following a precedent that had long 
been established in Ireland, permitted Nonconformist 
burial services and burials without religious services in 
parish churchyards, was partly, but not wholly, in- 
spired by hostility to the Established Church. In 
many instances a deeper and holier feeling made Non- 
conformists wish to be laid at rest with parents or an- 
cestors of the established faith, and in country districts, 
where no other burial-places existed, it was a real griev- 
ance that Nonconformist burials could only be effected 
with an Anglican service. 

The most important, however, of all modern con- 
quests of religious liberty have been those which placed 
at the disposal of men of all creeds the best education 
the nation could afford. The great work of the estab- 



516 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

lisliment of undenominational primary education in 
England will be hereafter considered. Its accomplisli- 
ment had been preceded by that long and arduous 
struggle for the admission of Nonconformists to the 
studies, degrees, and emoluments of the English uni- 
versities which forms one of the noblest pages in the 
history of the Liberal party, when English Liberalism 
was at its best. The rise of the High Church party in 
1833 greatly retarded it, and to the last that party 
strained every effort to close the doors of higher edu- 
cation against all who refused to accept the Anglican 
creed. The same spirit that led ecclesiastics in the 
eighteenth century, in the interests of their monopoly, 
to defend the law which degraded the sacrament into 
an office test, still prevailed, and the scandalously pro- 
fane system of compelling boys fresh from school to 
purchase their admission into Oxford by signing the 
Thirty-nine Articles, which not one in a hundred had 
seriously studied, was strenuously supported. Dublin 
University has the honourable distinction of having 
long preceded the English universities in the path of 
true Liberalism, for even before 1793 Catholics and 
Nonconformists were admitted among its students, and 
after 1793 they were admitted to its degrees, though 
not to its scholarships and fellowships. In the Scotch 
Universities, also, there was no religious test against 
Dissenters. In Cambridge, Nonconformists might 
become students, but no one could obtain a degree 
without subscribing the Thirty-nine Articles. At 
Oxford, Nonconformists were repelled on the very 
threshold, for the subscription was exacted at matricu- 
lation. English Dissenters were not only excluded 
from the inestimable advantage of higher education, 
and from the many great prizes connected with the 
universities — they were also seriously impeded, by the 



CH. VI. RELIGIOUS TESTS IN UNIVERSITIES 517 

want of a university degree, in their subsequent pro- 
fessional careers. 

This last grievance was removed by the foundation 
of the London University in 1836. Being a mere ex- 
amining body, it could not offer the teaching advan- 
tages, nor did it possess the splendid prizes, of the 
older universities ; but it at least conferred degrees 
which were highly valued, and which were encumbered 
by no theological test. Measures for opening Oxford 
and Cambridge to the Dissenters were again and again 
introduced by Liberal ministers, again and again car- 
ried in the Commons, again and again rejected in the 
Lords. In 1854, ^Nonconformists were allowed to ob- 
tain the B.A. degree in the old English universities, 
but they could not obtain higher degrees, and although 
they might compete at examinations for the great 
university prizes, they could not enjoy them. At last, 
in 1871, a great measure of enfranchisement, which 
was originally introduced by Mr. Coleridge, and had 
failed five times in the Lords, became law, opening 
nearly all offices and degrees in the universities with- 
out theological restriction. Seven years later the few 
remaining distinctions, with the very proper exception 
of degrees and professorships of divinity, were abo- 
lished by a Conservative Government. In Dublin 
University, the grievance of the restriction of fellow- 
ships and scholarships to members of the Established 
Church was mitigated in 1854 by the institution of 
non-foundation scholarships open to all creeds, and the 
whole body of the remaining restrictions Avas swept 
away by the Act of 1873. There is still, it is true, 
a Divinity School in Trinity College for the benefit 
of candidates for orders in the Protestant Episcopal 
Church. It corresponds to Maynooth, which is exclu- 
sively devoted to the education of priests, and which 



518 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

was set up and established by a large expenditure 
of public money. But, with the exception of the di- 
vinity professorships connected with this school, every 
post in the great Irish university, from the highest to 
the lowest, is now open to the members of all reli- 
gious creeds. 

The long delay in opening the English universities 
to Dissenters has been a great misfortune. It shut out 
whole generations from one of the best boons that a 
nation could offer to her children. It added some- 
thing to the acerbity and much to the narrowness of 
the Nonconformist spirit, and the unworthy and re- 
actionary attitude of the House of Lords on this and 
on kindred religious questions contributed perha^Ds 
more than any other cause to alienate from that 
House the Liberal sentiment of England. The evils 
resulting from that alienation are very great, though 
there are clear recent signs that it has been diminish- 
ing. The battle of religious disqualification is now 
substantially won. The balance of power has shifted. 
Other questions have arisen, and the dangers to be 
feared and to be guarded against lie in other directions. 
But the bias that was formed, the passions that were 
generated by bygone contests, are not wholly extinct, 
and they make it more difficult to save the State from 
the dangers of an unbridled democracy. 

In the universities, the evils that were predicted 
from the abolition of tests have never taken place. 
Many and various opinions are openly avowed, and 
truth has gained much by the avowal ; but the reli- 
gious sentiment has not decayed, and it is certainly not 
less genuine because it is no longer fortified by privi- 
lege, or connected with interested and hypocritical as- 
sents. While the foundation by private munificence 
of denominational colleges within an unsectarian uni- 



CH. VI. EFFECT OF ABOLITION OF TESTS 519 

versity lias preserved the best features of the old system, 
the juxtaposition of opposing creeds has produced no 
disorder, and university sentiment speedily accepted 
the changed situation. It was once my privilege to 
receive an honorary degree from the University of Ox- 
ford in company Avith a great and venerable writer, 
who had long been the most illustrious figure in Eng- 
lish Unitarianism, as well as one of the chief defenders 
of a spiritualist philosophy. I can well remember the 
touching language in which Dr. Martineau then de- 
scribed the dark shadow which his exclusion on account 
of his faith from English university life had thrown 
over his youth, and the strange feeling with which he 
found himself entering, at the age of eighty, an ho- 
noured and invited member, where fifty or sixty years 
before he and all other Dissenters had been so rigidly 
proscribed. 

The force and steadiness of the current which has, 
during the last half-century, been moving in the di- 
rection of the establishment of religious liberty and of 
the abolition of religious disqualifications cannot be 
mistaken. It has been accompanied by a correspond- 
ing movement in favour of an enlargement of the lines 
of the Established Church. I do not think that the 
hold of this Church upon the affections of the English 
people has, in the present generation, been really 
weakened, although some of the forces opposed to it 
have acquired additional strength, and although the 
growth within its borders of a ritualistic party may 
very possibly one day lead both to disruption and dis- 
establishment. But the lines of defence and of attack 
have been somewhat changed. Both the doctrine that 
a State establishment of religion is an essentially anti- 
Christian thing, and the doctrine that every nation is 
bound in its corporate capacity to profess a religion. 



520 



DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY 



CH. VI. 



and that the maintenance of an established Church is 
therefore the first of national duties have, I think, 
lost much of their old power. The belief that the 
Church, as a continuous organisation, has the same 
indefeasible right to its tithes and glebes as a private 
individual to the projoerty which he has earned or in- 
herited, and the belief that the diversion of property 
from religious to secular purposes is an act of sacrilege, 
have certainly not passed away, but they are no longer 
governing forces in English politics. 

The main defence of the Church of England as an 
establishment now rests upon its utility. It is, it is 
said, a great corporation, which is indissolubly bound 
up with the best elemeiits in the national life and his- 
tory, which has shown itself in these latter days as far 
as possible from dormant and effete, and which is ex- 
ercising over a vast area and in multifarious ways a 
beneficent, moralising, and spiritualising influence. 
If its revenues in the aggregate seem large, no other 
revenues are so little abused, are so constantly associ- 
ated with moral and useful lives, are so largely and so 
steadily employed for the benefit of the community. 
Its parochial system places in the poorest and most un- 
attractive parish an educated and cultivated resident 
gentleman, who is not dependent on his parishioners, 
and whose whole life is spent in constant intercourse 
with the poor, in constant efforts to improve their con- 
dition, to raise their morals, to console them in their 
troubles. Like the dew of Heaven, the silent, continu- 
ous action of this system falls over great tracts of 
human life and suffering which the remedies of the 
politician can never reach. There are no more beau- 
tiful or more useful lives than those which may be 
often found in some backward and deserted district, 
where tlie parish clergyman and his family are spread- 



CH. VI. ESTABLISHED CHURCHES 521 

ing around tliem a little oasis of cultivation and re- 
finement^ and, by modest, simple, unobtrusive and 
disinterested work, continually alleviating suffering 
and raising the moral level of those among whom they 
labour. What a contrast do they often present to the 
noisy demagogue, to the epicurean party gambler, who 
is seeking for votes or power by denouncing them ! It 
is impossible to doubt that the whole of this system 
would be greatly impaired if the Church were broken 
into fragments, and if its ministers degenerated into 
mere narrow sectarians, representing a lower plane of 
education and refinement, and depending for their 
subsistence on the good pleasure of their parishioners. 
And the parochial system is but one of the many 
benefits that may be traced to the Establishment. The 
maintenance of a learned clergy, who play a great part 
in the fields of literature and scholarship ; the cathedral 
system, which adds so largely to the splendour and 
beauty of English life ; the existence, both at home 
and abroad, of an order of men to whom British sub- 
jects of all creeds and classes have a right in time of 
trouble to appeal ; the wider latitude of opinion which 
an established Church seldom fails to give ; the im- 
portance of a State connection, both in restraining the 
excesses of sacerdotal tyranny and in diminishing the 
temptations to clerical demagogism, are all advantages 
which may be truly alleged and largely amplified. 
Many of them extend far beyond the limits of con- 
vinced Anglicans, and affect most beneficially the 
whole national life. Is it the part of a true statesman 
to destroy or weaken a machine which is doing so much 
good in so many ways ? Is it probable that its revenues 
would be more wisely or more usefully employed if 
they were flung into the political arena, to be struggled 
for by contending parties ? 



522 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. vi. 

But in order to strengthen these lines of defence two 
things are necessary. The one is^ that the disadvan- 
tages attending the existence of an established Church 
should be reduced to the smallest possible limits ; the 
other is, that the benefits of the establishment should 
be as largely as possible extended. The first object has 
been attained by the complete abolition of religious dis- 
qualifications and disabilities. These were once de- 
fended as inseparable from an establishment, and the 
best fortifications for its defence. They are now more 
justly looked upon as the most serious arguments 
against it, for they were restrictions and injuries im- 
230sed on difi:erent classes of the community in order 
that it might subsist. As we have seen, it has been 
one of the great works of the nineteenth century to 
sweep these disqualifications away. 

The other object is to comprehend the largest pos- 
sible portion of the English people in the Established 
Church. In this resj)ect reformers are following faith- 
fully the root idea of the Church, which was intended 
to be a national, or, in other words, a representative. 
Church, representing and including the two great sec- 
tions of the community that were separated from the 
See of Rome. One of these sections, though repudiat- 
ing the pretensions of the Pajoacy, leant strongly to- 
wards the theology of Rome ; the other frankly adopted 
the principles of the Reformation on the Continent. 
The composite and representative character of the 
Church is clearly exhibited in the Prayer Book, Avhich, 
if it does not contain positive contradictions of definite 
doctrine, at least includes very evident contradictions 
of tendency. 

The attempt of the Tudor statesmen to include the 
wliole body of the English people in the National 
Church failed, and the attem})t of the statesmen of the 



CH. VI. THE CHURCH AND NONCONFORMITY 523 

Eevolntion to bring back the great Puritan body by an 
Act of Comprehension was equally unsuccessful. The 
amalgamation of the different Protestant organisations 
is now plainly impossible, and if it were possible it 
would be of very doubtful benefit. It is true, indeed, 
that the original grounds of dissension have in a great 
measure disappeared. The rigidities and the distinc- 
tions of Calvinistic theology, which were once deemed 
so transcendently important, have lost their old hold 
on the minds of men, and an amount of ornament and 
ritual and music has crept into Puritan worship which 
would have aroused the horror of the early Puritans. 
The Eitualistic party in the Anglican Church is very 
widely separated from Protestant Nonconformity, but 
there is no real difference of principle between the 
Evangelical section of the Church of England and the 
great body of the Protestant Dissenters. With many 
the separation is a mere matter of taste, some persons 
preferring the written liturgy, and some the extem- 
poraneous prayers. Others object to the Church of 
England, not because their own type of theology has 
not a fully recognised place within its borders, but be- 
cause it also admits doctrines or practices which they 
condemn. With others, again, the separation depends 
wholly on the accident of birth and education. Through 
habit, or interest, or affection men prefer to remain in 
the ecclesiastical organisation in which they have been 
brought up, and with which they are not dissatisfied, 
rather than go over to another to which they have no 
objection. The case of Scotland shows how it is pos- 
sible for three Churches to exist in separation which 
are identical in their form of worship, identical in their 
ecclesiastical organisation, and all but identical in their 
doctrine. 

The decay of the doctrinal basis of English Noncon- 



524 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

formity^ tliongli it is not likely to lead to any amalga- 
mation of Churclies, is having one very mischievous 
consequence. It is giving ^NTonconformity a far more 
political character than in the past, and a political 
character which is sometimes singularly unworthy and 
unscrupulous. Envy becomes the guiding motiv^e, a 
desire to break down and diminish the Established 
Church the chief ground of political action. A charac- 
teristic though an extreme example of this spirit was 
exhibited by certain representatives of Welsh Noncon- 
formity, who actually opposed a Bill to enable the 
Bishops more easily to suppress immorality among 
their clergy, lest it should tend to increase the effi- 
ciency of the Establishment. ' In some periods of past 
history England owed much to the political action of 
Nonconformists, and they raised very appreciably the 
moral level of English politics. Those who have 
studied their conduct a]id their alliances in the present 
generation will scarcely attribute to them such an in- 
fluence. 

But although it is not possible, and probably not 
desirable, that the Established Church should absorb 
rival organisations, the steady tendency of the present 
generation has been to expand the circle of permissible 
opinions. An Act of 1865 modified materially the 
form of subscription to the Articles. Instead of being 
obliged to subscribe to ' all and everything ' in the 
Thirty-nine Articles and the Prayer Book, the clergy- 
man is now bound only to a belief in the doctrines of 
the Church as a whole. The gross tyranny which, 
under the name of the indelibility of orders, made it 
illegal for a clergyman who had found it impossible 

^ Seethe dohatos on the Clergy Sir R. Temple on this discus- 
Discipline ( Ininioralitv) Bill of sion. Life in Parliament,, pp. 
1892. See, too, the remarks of 341-43. 



CH. VI. FREEDOM OP RELIGIOUS OPINION 525 

conscientiously to continue in the Cliurcli to adopt any 
other profession^ was abolished in 1870^ in spite of the 
strenuous opposition of Bishop Wilberforce, and suc- 
cessive judicial decisions by the Privy Council have 
established the legal right of each of the three parties 
in the Church to hold their distinctive doctrines. 'No 
feature of the modern Anglican Church is more con- 
spicuous than the great variety of opinions that have 
now a fully recognised place within its limits. 

This movement has been much more a lay movement 
than a clerical one^ and it is mainly due to the influ- 
ence which establishment gives to the lay element in 
the government of the Church. It forms a remarkable 
contrast to the growing ascendency of ultramontanism 
in the Church of Eome^ but it is in fall accordance 
with the spirit that is prevailing in the legislation and 
the public opinion of nearly all countries. The ten- 
dency to multiply restrictions, which is so clearly seen 
in many departments of modern legislation, does not 
appear in the sphere of religion. The belief both in 
the certainty and in the importance of dogma has de- 
clined ; nearly everywhere great fields of human action 
are being withdrawn from the empire of the Churches, 
and the right of men to believe and profess various 
religious doctrines without suffering molestation or 
losing civil privileges is now very generally recognised. 
In some countries and districts the law is certainly in 
advance of public opinion. In some cases, where the 
overwhelming majority of the nation belong to one 
creed, there are restraints upon proselytism ; and dis- 
senters from the established creed, or from a limited 
number of recognised creeds, are forbidden to set up 
churches, though they may meet in private houses ; 
but with the single exception of Russia, all the coun- 
tries which in the first decades of the century were 



526 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

most intolerant in tlieir legislation have been touched 
by the new spirit. 

In Sweden, not many years ago, every administrative 
and judicial function was strictly limited to the profes- 
sors of the Lutheran creed. Even the practice of medi- 
cine and the right of teaching were confined to them. 
All attempts to induce a Lutheran to change his creed 
were penal offences, severely punished, and every Swede 
who abandoned the religion of his country was liable 
to banishment for life. It was not until 1800 that the 
existence of dissenting bodies was, under severely spe- 
cified conditions, recognised ; but in 1862, 1870, and 
1873 laws were passed permitting Swedish Lutherans to 
join other religions, and opening nearly all public posts 
and employments, as well as the seats in the Legisla- 
ture, to men of all religions." 

x^ustria, again, not long since was a great centre of 
religious and political reaction, but it is now one of the 
best-governed countries in Europe, and there are very 
few modern legislations which will better repay study 
than that of Austria since 1860. The Concordat of 
1855, which secured the Catholic Church a monopoly, 
has been annulled, and the Austrian Constitution makes 
all civil and political rights independent of creed, and 
guarantees to all subjects perfect liberty of conscience 
and worship. A distinction, it is true, is drawn be- 
tween recognised and unrecognised religions. The for- 
mer, by the organic law of 1867, comprised, in addition 
to Catholicism, the Protestant religions of the Confes- 
sion of Augsburg and of the Helvetic Confession, the 
Creek Church, and the Jewish Synagogue ; but a law 
of 1874 greatly enlarged the circle, by providing that 



* Block, Did. de la Politique^ article ' Suede.' See, too, Da- 
reste, Les Consiiiviions Jfodernes^ ii. 41, 42, 48, 51. 



CH. Yi. SPAIN AND PORTUGAL 527 

all other creeds might obtain a full legal recognition if 
they satisfied the Minister of Public Worship that there 
was nothing in their teachings worship^ or organisation 
contrary to law or morals^ and that they were safficiently 
numerous to support a Church. These recognised reli- 
gions may constitute themselyes as corporations^ regu- 
lating their own affairs^ founding establishments^ and 
exercising publicly their religious worship. The ad- 
herents of religions that are not legally recognised 
have^ however^ a full right to celebrate their worship 
in private houses^ provided there is nothing in that 
worship contrary to law or morals. In the State schools, 
religious instruction must be given separately to the 
scholars of different denominations by their own priests 
or pastors, or by lay teachers appointed by the different 
religious bodies. A valuable and most signifi.cant por- 
tion of the law of 187^ provides that the ecclesiastical 
power must never be used, except against the members 
of the Church to which it belongs, and that it must 
never be used with the object of interfering with the 
observance of the law, or the acts of the civil power, or 
the free exercise of any civil right. ^ 

Spain and Portugal are the last examples that need 
be given of countries in which, though scepticism and 
indifference are very rife, the whole population, with 
infinitesimal exceptions, is of one nominal belief, and 
in which the steady teaching of the Church and many 
generations of intolerant legislation have made the 
establishment of religious liberty peculiarly difficult. 
According to the judgment of those who are best ac- 



1 See I>arc.ste, Deniombrvnes. fional et de Legislaiion comjm- 

There is an admirable series of ree. They are scattered throuprh 

papers examininsr in detail the several volumes. See especially 

Austrian legislation since 1860 torn. viii. pp. 502-5. 
in the Revue de Droit Interna- 



528 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

quainted with these countries, there exists iu both 
countries, but especially in Spain, a strong determi- 
nation to secularise the government, to limit Church 
property, and to restrain ecclesiastical power, accom- 
panied by much indisposition to encourage any multi- 
plication or competition of religions.^ Few countries 
have witnessed, in the present century, more confisca- 
tions of Church property than Spain, and the political 
influence of its priesthood is very small, though it is 
not impossible that the establishment of universal suf- 
frage in 1890^ may tend to its revival. The Catholic 
religion is recognised as the religion of the State, but 
it is provided that no one on Spanish soil may be mo- 
lested for his religious opinions and for his worship as 
long as he respects Christian morality, though ' the 
public manifestations and ceremonies of the State re- 
ligion ' alone are authorised. Small congregations of 
Spaniards who dissent from the Established Church 
worship freely and publicly in the chief towns. 

In Portugal the law is very similar. The Catholic 
religion is recognised as the religion of the kingdom ; 
all others are permitted to strangers, and they may 
have edifices destined for their worship, but they must 
not have externally the appearance of churches. ' No 
one may be molested for his religion, provided he re- 
spects that of the State and does not offend public mo- 
rality.'' At the same time, a Portuguese who publicly 
apostasises from the Catholic Church is punished by 
twenty years^ suspension of political rights. ^ The priests 
have also in Portugal a recognised place as registering 



1 An interesting account of "- Seo Dareste, i. 626. 

religion in Spain Svill be found ''■Revue de Droit Interna- 

in Garrido, UEspagne Contem- tional^ xx. 834. 
poraine, pp. 12:5-62 (1862). 



CH. VT. TRUE RELIGIOUS LIBERTY 529 

agents at elections for the Chamber of Deputies, and 
these elections conclude Avith a religious ceremony.^ 

It will be evident, I think, to those who have taken 
an extended survey of the subject, that the line of re- 
ligious liberty which ought to be drawn in any country, 
like most other political lines, is not an inflexible or 
invariable one, but one which largely depends on many 
fluctuating considerations. The religious legislation of 
a country where there are grave differences of opinion 
will naturally be somewhat different from the legisla- 
tion of a country where there is a practical unanimi- 
ty, and where opposing creeds can only be introduced 
by immigration or by proselytism from without, and 
considerations of public order may most legitimate- 
ly modify and limit religious legislation. Religious 
processions, demonstrations, or controversies in the 
streets, which would probably produce obstruction or 
riot, or which are intended to injure some class or 
person, or which would irritate public opinion, may 
be most properly forbidden, while those which are 
practically harmless are allowed. 

There is a broad and intelligible distinction between 
the right of freely expressing religious or political opi- 
nions in churches or meetings to which no one is obliged 
to come, in books or papers which no one is obliged to 
read, and the right of expressing them in the public 
streets, which all men are forced to use, and which are 
the common property of all. The first and most essen- 
tial form of liberty is the liberty of performing lawful 
business without molestation and annoyance, and this 
liberty is most imperfectly attained when it is impos- 
sible for men, women, or children to pass through the 
streets without having attacks upon their religious 



' Demombrynes, i. 495, 503-5, 510. 
VOL. I. 34 



530 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

belief thrust forcibly upon their attention. In most 
countries such street controversies are rigidly sup- 
pressed. Where they are permitted, they ought surely 
to be deemed a matter of tolerance, and not of right ; 
to be regulated in each case according to special cir- 
cumstances. Some years ago it was the habit of a 
Protestant missionary society to placard the walls 
throughout the Catholic provinces of Ireland with 
questions and arguments subversive of the Catholic 
faith, and missionaries might be seen driving along 
the roads throwing controversial leaflets to every pea- 
sant, and into every turf-basket as they passed. In 
my own judgment, such a method of propagandism 
ought not to have been permitted, and it is probable 
that most of those who disagree with me would admit 
the principle for which I am contending, if the ar- 
guments that were disseminated had been directed, 
not against Catholicism, but against Christianity. In 
France, where a stringent law forbids meetings in the 
streets, it has been, under the Eepublic, a common 
thing to see profane and often obscene caricatures of 
the most sacred persons and incidents in the Evan- 
gelical narratives publicly exposed. The prohibition 
of such placards in the streets would surely not be a 
violation, but a vindication, of liberty. 

In India, questions of religious liberty of great 
delicacy and difficulty have arisen. For a long period 
it was the steady policy of the British Government not 
only itself to maintain an attitude of strict religious 
neutrality, but also to discourage proselytism as a grave 
danger to public order. ' The English,' Lord Macart- 
ney declared, ' never attempt to disturb or dispute the 
worship or tenets of others ; . . • they have no priests 
or chaplains with them, as have other European na- 
tions.' In 1793, when the charter of the East India 



CH. VI. RELIGIOUS POLICY IN INDIA 531 

Company was renewed, Wilberforce endeavoured to 
procure the insertion of clauses to the effect that it was 
the duty of the English to take measures for the reli- 
gious and moral improvement of the natives in India, 
and that the Court of Directors should for that purpose 
send out and maintain missionaries and schoolmasters, 
as well as chaplains and ministers for those of their 
own creed. Owing to the strenuous resistance of the 
East India directors and proprietors, these clauses were 
struck out of the Bill at the third reading ; the Com- 
pany for many years refused to grant licenses to mis- 
sionaries, and they more than once exercised against 
missionaries the power they possessed of expelling un- 
licensed Europeans from India. It was not until 1813 
that Parliament broke down the barrier, and threw 
open the doors of India to missionary efforts. It did so 
in spite of a great preponderance of Anglo-Indian opi- 
nion, and of the evidence of Warren Hastings, and this 
measure marks most conspicuously the increasing power 
which the Evangelical party was exercising in British 
politics.^ 

But although India was from this time thrown open 
to numerous missionary enterprises, the law forbade 
and forbids, in terms much stricter than would be em- 
ployed in British legislation, any word or act which 
could wound religious feelings,^ and the State endea- 
vours to maintain its own religious neutrality, and to 
abstain as far as possible from any act that could con- 
flict with the religious feelings, observances, and cus- 
toms of the subject races. It has not, however, always 



' Strachey's India ; Wilbe?-- Kaye's Christianity in India, 

fo7'ce's Life, ii. 24-28, 392-93 ; and Marsliraan's Lives of Carey, 

iv, 101-2G. See, too, on the Marshman, and Ward. 

history of the relations of Bri- ■' Stephen's History of Crimi- 

tish law to native religions, nal Law, iii. 312-13. 



532 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

been able to do so. It seems an easy thing to guaran- 
tee the free exercise of different forms of worship^ but 
grave difficulties arise when these religions bring with 
them a code of ethics essentially different from that 
of the ruling power. Probably the first instance in 
which the British Government undertook to prohibit a 
religious observance in India was in 1802, when Lord 
Wellesley suppressed under severe penalties the sacri- 
fice of children by drowning, which took place annually 
at the great religious festival at Saugor. The slaugh- 
ter of female infants, though it does not appear to have 
grown out of religious ideas, was fully recognised by 
Hindu morals, and it was practised on such a scale that 
within the memory of living men there were great dis- 
tricts in which not a single girl could be found in many 
villages.^ English law has made this act a crime, and 
some legislation which is as recent as 1870 has done 
much to suppress it. The human sacrifices that were 
once constantly performed before the images of Kali, 
and were not unfrequent at other shrines, have been 
abolished, and in 1829 Lord William Bentinck took the 
bold and most beneficent step of abolishing the suttee, 
or the practice of immolating Hindu widows on the 
funeral piles of their husbands. 

The horrible fact that several hundreds of women 
were annually burnt alive within the British dominions, 
and in the immediate neighbourhood of Calcutta, had 
long occupied the thoughts of British governors, but 
the practice was so essentially a religious rite that for 
a long time they did not venture to forbid it. Lord 
Cornwallis directed public servants to withhold their 
consent from the ceremony, if it was asked for, but he 
prohibited them from taking any official step to pre- 



Strachey's India^ pp. 290-91. 



OH. VI. SUPPRESSION OF THE SUTTEE 533 

vent it. Lord Wellesley consulted the judges about 
the possibility of suppressing it^ but in their opinion 
such a step would be extremely dangerous. In 1813, 
Lord Minto, while disclaiming all intention of forbid- 
ding it, or of interfering with the tenets of the native 
religions, undertook at least to introduce some limita- 
tions and regulations with the object of diminishing its 
barbarity. According to the new regulations, it could 
only be practised after communication with the magis- 
trates and principal officers of police, and in the pre- 
sence of the police, and they were directed to ascertain 
that the widow^s act was purely voluntary, that no stupe- 
fying or intoxicating drugs were employed, that there 
was up to the very last no violence or intimidation, that 
the victim was not under the age of sixteen and not preg- 
nant. There does not, however, appear to have been 
much diminution of the practice, and in 1828, the year 
preceding its suppression, it was officially reported that 
463 widows had been burnt, 287 of them being in the 
Calcutta division alone. ' In the ten previous years the 
annual number of immolations is said to have averaged 
not less than 600. 

The measure of Lord William Bentinck excited 
many fears and much opposition. It was argued that 
the practice of suttee had existed for countless centu- 
ries in India ; that it was in the eyes of the Hindus ' a 
religious act of the highest possible merit, ^ a ^ sacred 
duty^ and a ^high privilege ; ' that to prohibit it was 
a direct and grave interference with the religion of the 
Hindus, a manifest violation of the principle of complete 
religious liberty which the British Grovernment had 
hitherto maintained and guaranteed. Great fears were 
entertained that the sepoy army in Bengal might resent 



* Mill's History of India^ ix. 189. 



534 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

the suppression ; and it was remembered that the re- 
ligious element was believed to have contributed largely 
to the formidable sepoy mutiny which had taken place 
in 1806 at Vellore, in Madras. Lord William Bentinck, 
however, wisely took the officers of the Bengal Army 
into his confidence^ and he was convinced by their an- 
swers that there was no real danger of revolt. He was 
encouraged by the fact that the custom chiefly prevailed 
among the effeminate and timid inhabitants of Bengal ; 
that it was almost or altogether unknown in great dis- 
tricts of India ; that the Mohammedans in bygone days 
had successfully interfered with Hindu rites to a far 
greater extent than he proposed. The judges were now 
of opinion that the suttee might be safely abolished, 
and the determined policy of Lord AY. Bentinck com- 
pletely triumphed. Suttee was forbidden in Bengal in 
1829, in the Madras and Bombay provinces in the fol- 
lowing year. There were a few successful and unsuc- 
cessful attempts to evade the new law. There was one 
somewhat serious riot. There was a strong remon- 
strance, drawn up by leading Hindus. There was an 
appeal to the Privy Council in England ; but when 
the impotence of all resistance was established, the na- 
tives speedily, though reluctantly, acquiesced. In a 
few years suttee became a mere tradition of the past, 
and under English influence even native princes made 
laws for its suppression.^ 

At the same time the Government took the utmost 
pains to impress upon the natives that they entertained 



' See Boulger's Lord William widows was and is utterly dis- 

Bentinck^ pp. 77-111, and Mill's approved by all but a small 

Hisiory of British India, ix. minority of Hindus. I do not 

184-92. Sir John Stracliey, in believe that the majority, even 

tlie excellent book which he of the most highly educated 

published in 1888, says : ' The classes, approve it, \l?idia, pp. 

proliibition of the burning of 353-5-4). 



CH. VI. PILGRIM TAX 535 

no desire of disturbing their faith. Formal declara- 
tions had been repeatedly made that the laws of the 
Shastra and of the Koran would be maintained^ and 
that Hindu and Mohammedan would be as fully pro- 
tected in the free exercise of their religions as under 
a Hindu or a Mohammedan Government. The law 
specially recognised and protected the system of caste/ 
and the rites of idolatrous worship were to a large ex- 
tent endowed. A tax was levied on pilgrimages, and 
chiefly expended in defraying the expenses of the tem- 
ple worship. The worship of Juggernaut and many 
less important shrines was subsidised, and the Govern- 
ment exercised a superintending care over the manage- 
ment of the temples and over the vast endowments 
which had been from time immemorial connected with 
them ; prevented the misappropriation of their reve- 
nues ; sent soldiers and police to protect or dignify 
idolatrous processions, and contributed very largely by 
wise and honest administration to the prosperity of the 
great religious establishments. 

The Evangelical party in England agitated fiercely 
against these measures, and their influence gradually 
prevailed. In 1833 the Home Government was induced 
to order the abolition of the pilgrim tax and the dis- 
continuance of all connection between the Government 
and idolatrous ceremonies. For five years this order 
seems to have been little more than a dead-letter, but 
in 1838 more efficacious measures were taken. The 
management of the whole system of idolatrous Avorship, 
and of the revenues connected with it, passed exclu- 
sively into the hands of the believers, and all superin- 
tending and supporting connection on the part of the 
Government was withdrawn. 



37 George III. c. 142, sect. 13. 



536 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

Another difficult and dangerous question, in which 
considerations of humanity and justice were on one 
side, and old-established religious custom was on the 
other, was the question of inheritance. By the Mo- 
hammedan and the Hindu laws of inheritance apostacy 
was equiyalent to civil death, and the convert lost all 
rights of heritage. This law had, in the eyes of the 
believers, a religious character ; and the Hindu law of 
inheritance had an especially close connection with the 
Hindu religion, as property descended conditionally on 
the performance of religious rites, which were believed 
to be of transcendent importance for the benefit of the 
dead. Lord "William Bentinck, who had already im- 
mortalised himself by the suppression of the suttee, re- 
solved, if possible, to abolish the penalty which the 
native laws imposed on conversion, and in 1832 he in- 
troduced a regulation to that effect into Bengal. After 
long discussion and much opposition this policy at last 
triumphed, and an Act of Parliament of 1850 abolished 
through the whole of India every law and usage inflict- 
ing forfeiture of property on account of apostacy or 
exclusion from any faith. Another measure conceived 
in the same spirit, and directed against some peculiar 
Hindu superstitions, punished with imprisonment any- 
one who tried to intimidate another by threatening to 
make him the object of divine disjDleasure. The mar- 
riage of Hindu widows also was legalised. Native 
converts to Christianity were enabled to obtain a di- 
vorce from husbands or wives who had deserted them 
on account of their conversion. The rights of succes- 
sion and the power of bequest of natives who did not 
belong to any native religious community were fully 
recognised.^ 

' Stephen's History of Crimi- tianity in India ; Leslie Ste- 
nal Law^ iii. 821 ; Kaye's Chris- ]^hen's Life of Sir James Stephen^ 



CH. VI. THE EDWARDES MEMORANDUM 537 

These facts show sufficiently that, while the general 
principle of protecting the worship, revenues, and 
usages of native religions is fully recognised, there has 
been an increasing tendency in Indian legislation to 
allow considerations of humanity, justice, and indivi- 
dual liberty to override religious considerations. The 
great sepoy mutiny of 1857, which was mainly due to 
religious fanaticism, sufficiently disclosed the extreme 
dangers of the subject. After the suppression of the 
mutiny, also, there was a moment of great peril. A 
powerful party, supported by the high authority of 
Colonel Herbert Ed wardes, one of the most distinguished 
of Indian soldiers, attributed the mutiny to the British 
Government having neglected their duty of bringing 
home Christian truths to the native population, aiid 
Colonel Edwardes issued a memorandum urging tliat 
the true policy to be pursued was ' the elimination of 
all unchristian principles from the government of 
India. ^ To carry out this policy he desired that the 
Bible should be compulsorily taught in all Government 
schools ; that all endowments of native religions from 
public money, and all legal recognition of caste, should 
cease ; that the English should cease to administer 
Hindu and Mohammedan law, and to countenance 
Hindu and Mohammedan processions. This memo- 
randum received a considerable amount of partial or 
unqualified support, but wiser counsels ultimately pre- 
vailed. In the Queen's proclamation of October 1858 
there is a remarkable paragraph, which is said to have 
been due to the direct action of the Queen herself, and 
which did very much to establish permanent quiet in 
India. ' We do strictly charge and enjoin,' it said, ^on 



pp. 259-60. See, too, an ad- gious Policy in India' in Sir 
mirable chapter on ' Our Reli- Alfred Lyall's Asiatic Studies. 



538 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

all those who may be in authority under us, that they 
abstain from all interference with the religions beliefs 
and worshij) of any of our subjects, on pain of our 
highest displeasure/^ 

The policy indicated in these words has been, on the 
whole, carried out with signal sagacity and success, 
and the large introduction of natives into high offices 
under the Crown has had a reassuring influence on the 
native mind. Before the mutiny there were no natives 
on the bench of any supreme court of India, or in the 
Legislative Council, or in the higher branches of the 
Civil Service. Since the mutiny all these great de- 
partments have been thrown open to them. British 
law protects carefully the moral and social types that 
grow out of the native religions, and especially the 
Hindu conception of the family, which is widely differ- 
ent from that of Christian nations ; and it is mainly 
through respect for native ideas that the Indian penal 
code treats adultery as a criminal offence, and punishes 
it with imprisonment that may extend to five years. ^ 
At the same time, the prohibition of the suttee and of 
infanticide has introduced grave changes even into this 
sphere. The law already violates Hindu notions by 
permitting the remarriage of widows and modifying 
the rules of succession, and it is not likely that many 
years will pass before the pressure of philanthropic 
European opinion leads to a prohibition of the horrible 
custom of child marriage, under which girls of ten or 
twelve years are assigned as wives to old, worn-out, and 
perhaps d3^ing men. In the protected native States 
the British Government has repeatedly intervened for 
the purpose of putting down infanticide, suttee, sla- 



1 Bos worth Smith's Life of ^ Stephen's Criminal Law^ 
Lawrence^ ii. 325-20. iii. 318. 



CH. VI. ANGLO-INDIAN LAW 589 

very, the pimisliinent of alleged witches, and punish- 
ment by torture or mutilation.^ 

The educational policy of the Government also, 
which was chiefly adopted at the instigation of Sir 
Charles Wood in 1854, and which has since then been 
energetically and successfully pursued, cannot fail to 
have a real, though indirect and unintended, influence 
on religious belief. The first principle, it is true, of 
that policy is that ^ the ruling power is bound to hold 
itself aloof from all questions of religion.^ The uni- 
versities, in which the educational system culminates, 
are purely secular examining bodies, modelled after the 
London University ; and while grants in aid are ac- 
corded to all private educational establishments which 
impart a good secular education, are under competent 
management, and are open to inspection by Govern- 
ment officers, the State proclaims and steadily acts 
upon the principle of rigidly abstaining from all inter- 
ference with the religious teaching of these establish- 
ments. But many of the schools and colleges that have 
earned grants in aid are missionary establishments. 
Pure secular education, which the Government espe- 
cially encourages, is as repugnant to Mohammedan as to 
Catholic ideas ; the mixture of classes and creeds, 
which the new system fosters, breaks down social divi- 
sions that are closely connected with religious beliefs ; 
and the m_ere spread of scientific conceptions of the 
universe, of European habits of thought and standards 
of proof, must do much to shatter the fantastic cos- 
mogonies of the Hindu creeds, and produce a moral 
and intellectual type profoundly different from that of 
the old believers. Education as yet touches only a 
small fraction of the great Indian people ; but in this. 



1 Warner's Protected Princes of India ^ pp. 292-95. 



540 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY CH. VI. 

as in otlier ways^ contrary to its own wishes^, the influ- 
ence of the Government is ojDposed to the religion of 
the natives. It is not probable that it is preparing the 
way for Christian theology, but it is tending to under- 
mine or attenuate old beliefs and to introduce Western 
types of thought and morals. ^ Few attentive observers 
of Indian history/ writes Sir Henry Maine, ' can fail to 
see that the morality of modern indigenous literature 
tends to become Christian morality, which has pene- 
trated further than Christian belief.'' ' 

Another case in which the principles of religious 
liberty have come into collision with principles of mo- 
rality and public expediency may be found in Mor- 
monism in America. Polygamy was not an original 
doctrine of the Mormon faith : it was not until 1843, 
thirteen years after the publication of the Book of 
Mormon, that Joseph Smith professed to have a reve- 
lation authorising it, and it was not until 1852 that it 
was openly acknowledged to the Gentile world. Long 
before this period, however, the Mormons had experi- 
enced a large amount of severe and illegal mob persecu- 
tion. The rise and rapid progress of a new religion 
combining to an extraordinary degree the element of 
fraud with the elements of fanaticism soon aroused a 
fierce resistance, which was entirely unrestrained by 
the provisions of the Constitution giving unrestricted 
right of religious belief and profession. 

In its first form Mormonism was simply a society of 
men believing in the divine mission and revelations of 
Joseph Smith, baptised for the dead in a Church 



1 Ward's Reign of Queen Vic- Blue Book on ' The Results of 

toria^ i. 4G2. There is an ex- Indian Administration during 

cellent cliapter on Indian Edu- the past Thirty Years' (1889), 

cation in Sir John Straehey's pp. 16-18. 
India. See, too, an interesting 



CH. VI. RISE OF MORMONISM 541 

which he founded and ruled, placing their property at 
his disposal, holding some very materialistic views 
about the nature of the Divinity, and also a strange 
notion that Christ had preached in America, after His 
crucifixion, to Children of Israel who already peopled 
that continent.^ However eccentric might be these 
opinions, Mormonism in its general aspect was a sect 
not wholly differing from many others, and it could 
move freely within the wide limits which the American 
Constitution accorded to religious developments. The 
Mormons were first concentrated in considerable num- 
bers in the town of Kirtland, in Ohio, but they soon 
migrated to the thinly populated district called Jack- 
son County, in Missouri, where about 1,200 were esta- 
blished. In obedience to a revelation of Joseph Smith, 
they purchased a large tract of land, and streams of 
fanatics poured in, boasting loudly that the land was to 
be given to them as an inheritance. 

The old settlers, however, resented bitterly the in- 
trusion of this sinister element, and after a long series 
of acts of violence and several vicissitudes, the Saints, 
now numbering about 12,000, were compelled to cross 
the Mississippi into Illinois, where they built the town 
of Nauvoo. They soon organised a powerful militia, 
established a regular government, and displayed to an 
extraordinary degree those industrial qualities for which 
they have always been remarkable. For a few years 
their progress was uninterrupted. A vast temple con- 
secrated to their worship was erected, and they grew 
every month in numbers, power, and wealth; but the 
same causes that aroused hostility in Missouri made 
them unpopular in Illinois, and it was strengthened by 
a well-founded belief that the sect was moving in the 



' This is stated in the Book of Mormon. 



542 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

direction of sexual license. Internal dissension also 
appeared ; riots broke out, and the State authorities 
intervened. Joseph Smith and his brother surrendered 
to stand their trial on the charge of having instigated 
an attack on the office of a hostile newspaper, and were 
placed in prison. Then followed one of those tragedies 
which have always been peculiarly common in America : 
the prison was stormed and captured by a hostile mob, 
and Joseph Smith was shot dead. This last event took 
place in June 1844. 

But the new Church survived its founder, and the 
election of Brigham Young placed at its head a man of 
very superior powers, who exercised an almost undis- 
puted authority till his death in 1877. It was sur- 
rounded by numerous and bitter enemies, who were 
utterly unrestrained by any considerations of law, and 
after many months of trouble and violence, after the 
loss of many lives and the endurance of terrible suffer- 
ings, the Mormons who had not already fled from 
Nauvoo were driven forcibly across the Mississippi. 
They had, however, before this time taken measures 
for a migration which is one of the most remarkable 
incidents in modern history. Inspired by a passionate 
fanaticism that seems strangely out of place in the 
nineteenth century and in an intensely industrial soci- 
ety, they resolved to cross the Kocky Mountains, to 
traverse a space of no less than 1,000 miles, and to 
establish their Church far beyond the limits of the 
United States, in a wild and desert country, inhabited 
only by roving bands of savage Indians. This daring 
scheme was executed with extraordinary skill, resolu- 
tion and perseverance, and in 1847 and 1848 several 
thousands of fugitives planted the nucleus of a great 
State on the borders of the Salt Lake. 

There is no other instance in history in which a re- 



CH. VI. UTAH 543 

ligioiis fanaticism was so closely blended with an in- 
tense industrial spirit^ and the speed with which the 
new colonists transformed a barren waste, built and 
organised a great city, and planted in this far-off land 
all the elements of civilisation, is one of the wonders 
of American history. Immigrants poured in by thou- 
sands, and it seemed as if the new Church would at 
last be suffered to develop its own type of life and belief 
undisturbed. But the ill-fortune that had hitherto 
pursued it continued. The discovery of Californian 
gold drew the stream of white emigration across the 
territory of the Salt Lake, the Treaty of 1848 with 
Mexico placed the Mormon home within the jurisdic- 
tion of the United States, and Arizona and New Mexico 
grew up on its southern borders. 

The Mormons desired to form themselves into a 
separate State under the name of Deseret, or ^ The 
Land of the Honey-Bee,^ and if they had been able to 
do so they would have obtained almost absolute power 
of self -legislation ; but Congress refused to recognise 
them, and in 1850 the Mormon district was organised 
into the Territory of Utah. The position of a Terri- 
tory is very different from that of a State, for the chief 
executive officers in it are appointed by the President 
of the United States, and, although a local legislative 
body exists, Congress retains great powers of legislation 
and control. 

Brigham Young was appointed the first governor, 
though he was, a few years after, removed on account 
of his resistance to the Federal authorities. For a long 
time the Mormon priesthood were omnipotent in Utah. 
As might have been expected, their main object was to 
baffle all interference on the part of the Federal Go- 
vernment and to protect themselves from Gentile 
intrusion ; while their missionaries preached their 



544 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

doctrines far and wide, and many thousands of immi- 
grants from England and Wales, from the Scandina- 
vian countries in Europe, and from other portions of 
the United States, traversed the vast expanse of 
desert, and brought to the new colony their strong 
arms, their burning enthusiasm, and their complete 
surrender of all individual will and judgment to the 
orders of the Mormon chief. The Federal officers who 
were sent to Utah found themselves |)ractically power- 
less in the face of a unanimous ^^ublic feeling. All the 
subordinate functionaries and all the jurymen were 
Mormons. 

The tide, however, of Gentile emigration had set in 
for the West, and emigrants who were not Mormons 
began to come to a territory where all the first diffi- 
culties of settlement had been overcome. They were 
naturally far from welcome ; in 1857 a large party 
were massacred at a place called Mountain Meadows, 
and although Indians were the chief agents in the 
crime, it was at last clearly traced to a Mormon source. 
It was not, however, till nearly twenty years after it took 
place that the chief Mormon culprit was brought to 
justice.^ Many minor acts of violence appear to have 
been committed, and as long as the juries consisted of 
Mormons it was found impossible to punish them. 
But the completion of the Union Pacific Eailway, and 
the discovery of some rich silver and lead mines, 
strengthened the Gentile immigration, and it was 
vaguely computed, about 1890, that there were some 
50,000 Gentiles in Utah and about 110,000 Mormons.^ 



' Many particulars about this Art. ' Mormonism.' The same 

remarkable case will be found well-informed writer computes 

in an article in the Revue des the whole number of Mormons 

Deiix Mondes, October 15, 1895. at at least 250,000. 

- Encyclopedia Americana^ 



CH. VI. SHOULD POLYGAMY BE TOLERATED ? 545 

But before this time the existence and the rapid in- 
crease of a polygamous community in America greatly 
occupied American opinion, and different religious 
bodies were urging the duty of suppressing it. There 
was, however, grave difference of opinion on the sub- 
ject. Deplorable as was the appearance of a polygamist 
sect in the midst of a Christian land^ there were those 
who contended that polygamy among the Mormons 
ought to be tolerated, as Christian Governments had 
always tolerated it among Hindus and Mohammedans. 
It was clearly the offshoot of a religious system resting 
on a religious doctrine, and it was a fundamental prin- 
ciple of the United States to give all religions the most 
ample scope for their development. Polygamy, these 
reasoners observed, prevails over a vast proportion of 
the human race. It is supported by clear and incon- 
testable Old Testament authority, and it is not very 
clearly condemned in the New Testament. When it is 
the acknowledged doctrine of a well-defined Church it 
is undoubtedly an evil, but it is much less dangerous 
than when it is irregularly practised in a generally mo- 
nogamous society. It does not produce the same con- 
fusion of proj^erties and families, the same deception, 
or the same social stigma and oppression. Much was 
said of the duty of the Federal Government to inter- 
vene on behalf of the oppressed women, who were de- 
graded by polygamy to an inferior and servile condition. 
It is impossible, however, to overlook the curious and 
significant fact tliat the Mormons were the first, or 
almost the first, people to give the political suffrage to 
women ; that female suffrage existed among them for 
many years ; and that it proved so favourable to poly- 
gamy that its abolition by the Congress was one of the 
measures for suppressing that custom. In the words 
of one of the latest American writers on this subject, 
VOL. I. 35 



546 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

' Woman suffrage existed in Utah for seventeen years, 
and proved to be one of the strongest bulwarks of poly- 
gamy/ ' For more than a quarter of a century the 
Mormon Church fought, with every weapon that it 
could command, the laws directed against its favourite 
institution. One by one new and more vigorous pen- 
alties were enacted by Congress against polygamy. 
Finding women the most ardent champions of the 
vicious practice (owing to their stronger religious con- 
victions), Congress, in 1887, took away their right of 
sulfrage.^^ 

In the face of such facts it was very difficult to con- 
tend that polygamy was generally unjDopular among the 
Mormon women. It was certain that women bore their 
full proportion among the Mormon converts and the 
Mormon devotees, and there w^as strong evidence to 
support the conclusion that they were in general con- 
tented with their lot. Marriage usually took place 
very early. The wives were persuaded that their state 
in a future world depended on the happiness they pro- 
cured their husbands in this ; and it was part of a 
Mormon's religious duty to live equally with his wives, 
and abstain from favoritism. If they did not observe 
this duty, they were publicly reprimanded. ^ The Mor- 
mons, it was said, only asked to be left alone. They 
had gone forth, at the cost of terrible hardships, into a 
distant and lonely wilderness to practise their religion 



^ Mr. Glen Miller in The The Nineteenth Century^ Janu- 

Forum^ Dec. 1894. ary 1884. Mr. Barclay quotes 

^See an interesting descrip- official statistics showing how 
tion of Mormon life and ideas, immensely greater is the pro- 
by Comte d'Haussonville, Revue portion of crimes among the 
des Devx Mondes^ November Gentiles than among the Mor- 
15, 1882; and also an article mons at Utah. See, too. Cap- 
called 'A New View of Mor- tain Burton' 9 City of the Saints. 
monism,' by R. W. Barclay, in 



CH. VI. crusa.de against polygamy 547 

in peace, and whatever civilisation existed in Utah was 
wholly their work. Nor was that civilisation, even 
from a moral point of view, a contemptible one. What- 
ever else might be said of polygamy, it could not be 
denied that it had extinguished in Utah forms of vice 
that were the canker of all other American cities. 
Prostitution, adultery, illegitimate births, abandoned 
children, were unknown among the Mormons, and the 
statistics of crime showed that, judged by this test, 
they were far superior to the Gentiles around them. In 
intelligent, well-organised and successful industry they 
had never been surpassed. Work was taught as the 
first of duties. Large families, which in old countries 
indicate a low industrial civilisation, had a different 
character in a new country, where the cost of labour was 
enormously great. Each member worked in his own 
department for the whole family, and each family be- 
came almost wholly self-subsisting. ^ 

Had a community of this kind, it was asked, no 
claim on the forbearance of the Government ? Ought 
it to be treated as a mere seed-plot of vice ? Was it in 
accordance with the religious liberty which was so so- 
lemnly guaranteed by the Constitution of the United 
States ; was it becoming in a great and free democracy 
to enter into a persecuting crusade against a Church, 
however erroneous, against a practice, however deplor- 
able, which was inseparably connected with a religious 
doctrine ? And was such a crusade likely to have any 
other consequence than to make martyrs, and to kindle 
this strange fanaticism into a fiercer flame ? 

As early as 1862 there had been a law against poly- 
gamy, and attempts had sometimes been made to en- 
force it, but they proved almost absolutely abortive. 



Comte d'Haussonville. 



548 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

All the juries were Mormons, and in the space of 
eighteen years there had not been more than two convic- 
tions for polygamy. After the termination of the great 
Civil War public opinion was more strongly directed to 
the subject, and more than one stringent law against 
polygamy was made. The Mormons asserted that 
pol3^gamy was a tenet of their faith, and therefore en- 
titled to the protection which the Constitution accorded 
to all forms of religious belief ; but the Supreme 
Court decided that no such article of faith could claim 
protection under the Constitution.^ In 1879 the Go- 
vernment of the United States attempted to enlist the 
services of other countries in the crusade, and a circu- 
lar letter was sent to the American ministers in Europe, 
calling the attention of the European Governments to 
the American enactments against polygamy, and asking 
them to prevent the preaching of Mormonism and 
the emigration of professed Mormons to the United 
States ; but the Governments of the countries where 
Mormon missionaries had been most successful replied 
that they could not undertake to inquire into the re- 
ligious belief of emigrants. The laws of 1871 and of 
1874 proved almost as inoperative as that of 1862. 
Federal judges were sent down to try cases, but they 
could try them only with juries that were mainly or 
exclusively Mormon, and it was almost impossible to 
induce such a jury to convict in a case of polygamy. 

Eeligious opinion, however, in the United States 
urged on the Government, and in 1882 they began a 
life-and-death struggle for the purpose of stamping out 
polygamy. The Edmunds law, which was carried after 
long discussion in that year, is a striking illustration of 
the extreme energy which democratic communities can 



^ Dickinson, New Light on Mormonism^ p. 174. 



en. VI. CRUSADE AGAINST POLYGAMY 549 

throw into repressive legislation. Utah had been 
steadily denied the privileges of a State constitution^ 
and its internal affairs were therefore under the full 
control of Congress. The Edmunds law provided that 
in all the ' Territories ' of the United States bigamy 
and polygamy should be punished witli a fine of not 
more than 500 dollars and imprisonment up to five 
years. In order to overcome the difficulty of obtain- 
ing proof of marriage, it provided that anyone cohab- 
iting with more than one woman shall be punishable 
by imprisonment up to six months, or by a fine not 
exceeding 300 dollars, or by both punishments, at the 
discretion of the court ; and that on trials for bigamy, 
polygamy, or unlawful cohabitation, any juryman might 
be challenged who had been living in the practice of 
any of these acts, or who, without being himself a po- 
lygamist, ' believes it right for a man to have more 
than one living and undivorced wife at the same time, 
or to live in the practice of cohabiting with more than 
one woman. ^ Every man as he entered the jury-box 
might be questioned on oath as to his belief and prac- 
tice in these matters. Polygamists and their wives 
were at the same time deprived of all power of voting 
at elections, and were incapacitated from holding any 
public place of trust or emolument. All registration 
and election offices in the Territory of Utah were de- 
clared vacant, and a commission of five persons, ap- 
pointed by the President of the Eepublic, was sent 
down to supersede all Mormon functionaries in matters 
of election, and to appoint new ones.^ 

Under the influence of this most Draconic law poly- 
gamy was for the first time severely punished. All 



' Sec the text of the Edmunds law in Dickinson, New Light on 
Mormonism^ pp. 150-53. 



550 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

who practised and all who sympathised with it being 
removed from the juries^ many convictions were ob- 
tained. In the year ending in September 1891 there 
were no less than 109 convictions.^ In general the 
Mormons appear to have welcomed their long sentences 
of imprisonment in the spirit of martyrs, declaring 
that they must obey God rather than men, and women 
constantly refused to give evidence that could convict 
their husbands. Under the disenfranchising clauses of 
the Edmunds law about 12,000 men and women were 
deprived of their votes. ^ 

As, however, the actual practice of polygamy was by 
this law required for disfranchisement, power still re- 
mained with the Mormons, and Mormons who believed 
in polygamy, though they were not known to be them- 
selves polygamists, were almost always elected. But a 
long series of other measures were taken to break down 
their political power. By the Federal law which I have 
already mentioned female suffrage in Utah was abol- 
ished, on the ground that it contributed to strengthen 
Mormonism. It was decided that, the Mormon Church 
being ^utterly subversive of good morals and the well- 
being of society,^ no alien who is a Mormon could be 
naturalised, and the funds of the Mormon society for 
encouraging immigration were confiscated. A local 
test oath was imposed as a qualification for the suffrage, 
obliging every voter to swear that he is not a bigamist 
or polygamist, or a member of any order which encou- 
rages and practises plural marriage ; and the Supreme 
Court, in 1890, determined that this test was not con- 
trary to the Constitution. The criminal law against 



^ Political Science Quarterly^ {The Nineteenth Century^ Jan- 
1891, p. 768. uary 1884). 

2 Mr. Barclay says 16,000 



CH. VI. CRUSADE AGAINST POLYGAMY 551 

polygamy was steadily enforced, and it was strengthened 
by new and stringent provisions directed against un- 
willing witnesses, compelling a full registration of all 
marriages, depriving illegitimate children of rights of 
inheritance, and treating, in the spirit of the old Puri- 
tan legislation, both adultery and simple fornication as 
criminal offences.^ These last measures, of course, 
both were and were intended to be purely partial in 
their operation. No one would have dreamed of apply- 
ing them to Chicago or New York. But by such means 
the Mormon ascendency in Utah was broken, and in 
the election of 1890 the Gentile element, for the first 
time, obtained control of its municipal government.^ 
The Mormon Church was itself pronounced to be an 
illegal corporation, its property was forfeited or es- 
cheated ; and the forfeiture appears to have been se- 
verely enforced. As one of the latest American writers 
on the subject says, * Officials sent from the Eastern 
States to official positions in the Territory as a reward 
for party services, found indiscriminate denunciation of 
the Mormons an excellent method of perpetuating po- 
litical power. It is notorious that not a few who came 
to Utah poor men enriched themselves at the expense 
of the Mormon Church. The shrinkage of the Church 
property escheated by the Government would itself 
unfold a tale of official rapacity, "* and there were ^ugly 
hints of corruption^ extending even to the judicial 
bench. ^ 

' The text of the very severe married man or woman commits 

and comprehensive Act of 1884: fornication, each of them shall 

is given in Dickinson, pp. 153- be punished by imprisonment 

60. It enacts, among other not exceeding six months, or by 

things (ss. 19, 20), 'that who- fine not exceeding 100 dollars.' 

ever commits adultery shall be ^ Political Science Quarte^'ly^ 

punished by imprisonment in 1890, pp. 371-72. 

the penitentiary not exceeding ^ The Forum^ December 1894, 

three years,' and 'that if an un- p. 464. 



552 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

It would reqaire an amount of local knowledge to 
wliicli I can make no pretence, and which only an 
American writer is likely to possess, to estimate with 
any confidence the present and future effects of this 
crushing legislation. The accounts are somewhat con- 
flicting, and for some time after the enactment of the 
Edmunds law very competent American writers were 
exceedingly desponding about the results. They com- 
plained that polygamy had never been more defiantly 
preached and more fearlessly practised ; that it seemed 
rather to increase than diminish ; that the whole body 
of the Mormons acted with a perfect discipline in obe- 
dience to the commands of their chief, voting together, 
controlling their schools, and electing their chief oifi- 
cers. Having been refused the right of State indepen- 
dence for more than twenty years after their population 
and wealth were sufficient to entitle them to it, they 
made it an object to secure a predominance in the State 
of Nevada, and soon acquired there an important influ- 
ence. They were said to hold the balance of power in 
Idaho and Arizona, and to be rapidly increasing in the 
Territories of Washington, Montana, and Wyoming, as 
well as in Colorado and IS'ew Mexico. Rumours of 
another distant migration were sometimes heard among 
them. They were accused of an implacable hatred to 
the Federal Government, and the opinion was openly 
expressed by many of their enemies that even if Mor- 
monism cleared itself from all suspicion of polygamy, 
it should be exterminated at any cost ; that it was lead- 
ing rapidly to civil war in Utah ; that if it were not 
effectually suppressed the Mormon leaders would, in a 
few years, rule every State to the west of the Missis- 
sippi . ^ 

' EncyclopcBdia Americana^ New Lighi_ on^ Mormonisra. pp. 
Art. • Mormonism :' Dickinson's 



CH. VI. EFFECTS OF THE CRUSADE 553 

Whether these statements were exaggerated when 
they were originally made I am not able to say. There 
is, however, evidently another side to the question, and 
during the last few years, and" especially since 1891, 
the aspect of the Mormon question in America has con- 
siderably changed. Many powerful influences have 
been favouring the policy of the Government. It was 
noticed that among the more wealthy Mormons there 
was a growing disposition to secede. Such men na- 
turally desired to escape the strict exaction of tithes 
for the benefit of the Mormon Church, and they felt 
more keenly than poor men both the legal penalties 
and the social stigma attaching to their creed. Poly- 
gamy had proved, from an economical point of view, 
possible, and even successful, as long as the family re- 
mained fully self-supporting and all its members were 
engaged in different industries, but it became far too 
expensive a luxury to subsist long, under the condi- 
tions of American life, in an idle, leisured class. More 
frequent and more intimate contact with the Gentile 
world, and the rise of a new generation who had but 
little of the fierce fanaticism of the early converts, had 
their influence, and many of the younger Mormons 
were manifestly indisposed to an institution which 
brought with it severe social and legal penalties, and 
obstructed and hampered them at every step of their 
career. While such a feeling was growing, a formida- 
ble schism broke out in the Church. A party called 
Josephites, or ^Latter-day Saints of the Keorganised 
Church of Jesus Christ,' appeared, and is said soon to 



of the 3Iormon Problem. There in the English press on tlie sub- 
are some striking and, I think, ject of Mormonism in Mill On 
just remarks on the persecuting Liberty^ pp. 163-67 (ed. 1859). 
spirit which has been displayed 



554 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

have enlisted 20^000 followers. It was led by Joseph 
Smith, a son of the founder of Mormonism, and it de- 
nounced polygamy as a departure from the original 
faith/ 

All these things were preparing a great change in 
the Mormon Church ; and the laws against polygamy 
appear to have found considerable, though for the most 
part silent, support among the Mormons themselves. 
After some hesitation their leaders recognised the fact. 
The abstract lawfulness of this institution is still a 
part of the Mormon creed, but its practice under pre- 
sent circumstances has not only been suspended, but 
been forbidden in the Mormon Church. In September 
1890 the head of that Church publicly announced a 
revelation warning Latter-day Saints against contract- 
ing any marriage forbidden by the law of the land. 
Whether this abandonment is final and quite sincere it 
is difficult to say, but Mr. Glen Miller, whom I have 
already quoted as a late authority on the subject, 
firmly believes in its reality. ^ The institution of 
polygamy/ he says, ' would have gone down eventually 
of its own weight under the rush of Centile immigra- 
tion. The action of the Church only hastened the in- 
evitable. In the days of its strongest hold less than 10 
per cent, of the adult males of the Territory lived in 
polygamy. No '^'^ plural" marriages in any form are 
now taking place in Utah. It is a sin within the Mor- 
mon Church, as within any other, to live with more 
than one woman. The young man who should attempt 
it would find himself and his mistress (for such any 
" plural " wife would be regarded) subject to the same 
social ostracism from the Mormons as from society at 
large. ^ At the same time, this writer observes, ''there 



Dickinson, pp. 215-16. 



CH. VI. POLYGAMY ABANDONED 555 

lias been a complete cessation of persecution for poly- 
gamy, and numbers of old-time offenders have resumed 
relations with their '^'^ plural"" wives with practical im- 
munity from punishment. But the prop of polygamy — 
its social respectability and exaltation as a religious 
virtue — has been taken away. These old polygamists 
visit their younger wives precisely as a married man in 
an Eastern community might consort with a mistress — 
quietly and stealthily, not openly or boastfully, as 
formerly." 

The sharp division between the Mormons and the 
Gentiles, which a few years ago was general, is fast dis- 
appearing. Intermarriages are not unfrequent. They 
mingle largely in the public schools. They are united 
in all forms and institutions of business ; and what is 
perhaps even more important, the Mormons have 
ceased to act politically as a purely isolated body, and 
have thrown themselves cordially into the great party 
contests of the United States.' They are said to be 
exhibiting to a full measure that flexibility of adapta- 
tion which is so remarkable in the American people, 
and which enables them with a rapidity scarcely known 
in Europe to accommodate themselves to new condi- 
tions. 

The authorities in the Federal Government have 
shown themselves very ready to accept the submission. 
In the September of 1894, President Cleveland issued 
a proclamation declaring that he was satisfied that the 
members of the Mormon Church were now living in 
obedience to the law, and granting a full amnesty and 
pardon to those who had been convicted of polygamy 
and deprived of their civil rights ; ^ and in the same 



The Forum, December 1894. ^ 7T;^g Times, July 14, Sept. 

29, 1894. 



556 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

year Congress passed a measure under wliicb. Utah, in 
the beginning of 1896, attained its long-sought object, 
and was admitted as a separate State in the American 
Union. One of the conditions of the enabling Act is 
that the new Constitution prohibits polygamy. 

The party which was created for the special pur- 
pose of opposing Mormonism was formally disbanded 
at the close of 1893, and both of the great parties 
in the State are now competing for the Mormon vote. 
The charge which has recently been brought, with 
most effect, against the Mormons has not been their 
polygamy, but their susceptibility to Church inter- 
ference in political life. At the same time the non- 
Mormon politicians have shown themselves very ready 
to nominate as candidates officials of the Mormon 
Church, believing that such candidates are likely to 
secure the largest number of Mormon votes. A gentle- 
man holding the high position of ' Apostle ' in the 
Church was put forward by the Democratic party as 
their nominee for the Senate of the United States.^ So 
complete to all appearance is the reconciliation between 
the American Government and the Mormon Church, 
that it is said to be a Mormon tenet that the American 
Constitution is an inspired document.^ 

A future historian must tell the final results of the 
conflict which I have described between religious fa- 
naticism and repressive legislation, but it is surely a 
curious sign of the times that the theatre of the sti'uggle 
should have been the great democracy of the West. 



' See an article of Mr. Glen '^ Report of the Commissioners 

Miller's in The Foriim^ Decern- on the Causes of Immigration 

ber 1895. The senators elected, to the U.S.A. (House of Repre- 

however, were of the Republi- sentatives, 1892), pp. 185-86. 
can party. 



CH. VI. THE ANTI-SEMITE MOVEMENT 557 

When democratic opinion tliorouglily favours repres- 
sion, that repression is likely, in the conditions of 
modern society, to be stronger and more uncompro- 
mising than under a monarchy or an aristocracy. It 
is difficult to observe without some disquiet the mani- 
festly increasing tendency of democracies to consider 
the regulation of life, character, habits, and tastes 
within the province of Grovernments. On the whole, 
however, democracies, at least in the Anglo-Saxon 
race, seem to me favourable to religious liberty. No 
doctrines have more manifestly declined during the last 
half -century than the doctrines of salvation by belief, 
of exclusive salvation, and of the criminality of error, 
which lay at the root of the great persecutions under 
Christian rule. No forms of liberty are more prized 
by English democracies than the liberty of expression, 
discussion, and association. The prevailing passion 
for equality favours the rise of various sects, and a 
great indifference to religious dogma in general pre- 
vails among the working class, who have now risen to 
power. 

There is, however, another influence connected with, 
and scarcely less strong than, democracy which has an 
opposite tendency, and it is probable that if religious 
persecution ever again plays a great part in human 
affairs, it will be closely connected with that growing 
sentiment of nationality which I have examined in 
the last chapter. No attentive observer can have failed 
to notice how frequently it displays itself in a desire to 
unify the national type, and to expel all alien and un- 
congenial elements. Religion more than any other 
single influence perpetuates within a nation distinct 
types and consolidates distinct interests. Few facts in 
the nineteenth century have been so well calculated 
to disenchant the believers in perpetual progress with 



558 DEMOCRACY ASD LIBERTY ch. ti. 

their creed as the anti-Semite movement^, which iu a 
few years has swept like an angiy wave over the 
greater part of Enrope. It was scarcely heard of be- 
fore the latter years of the seventies, bnt it has already 
become a great power, not only in semi-civilised conn- 
tries like Eonmania and Enssia, but also in Austria 
and in Germany. In France, which had been promi- 
nent for its early liberality to the Jews, the immense 
j)Opularity of the works of Drumont shows that the 
anti-Semite spirit is widely spread. I have already 
noticed how clearly the extravagant French enthu- 
siasm for Eussia, at the very time when the Eussian 
G-ovemment was engaged in savage persecution of the 
Jewish race, shows that a question of national in- 
terests and national revenge could supersede, in one of 
the most enlightened nations in Europe, all the old 
enthusiasm for religious liberty. The recent move- 
ment for proscribing, under pretence of preventing 
cruelty to animals, the mode of killing animals for 
food, which is enjoined in the Jewish ritual, is cer- 
tainly at least as much due to dislike to the Jews as 
to consideration for cattle. It appears to have arisen 
among the German anti-Semites, especially in Saxony, 
and in 1893 a law prohibiting the Jewish mode of 
slaughtering cattle was carried in Switzerland by a 
popular vote. 

In these countries the anti-Semite movement has been 
essentially a popular movement, a fierce race-hatred, 
pervading great masses of the peoj)le, and for the 
most part neither instigated nor encouraged by their 
Governments. Eeligious fanaticism has mixed with it, 
but usually, and especially in Germany, it has played 
only a very minor part. Many causes have conspired 
to it. The enormous power which Jews have obtained 
in the press and the money markets of Europe is very 



CH. VI. THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION 559 

evident, and great power is never more resented than 
when it is in the hands of men who suffer from some 
social inferiority. Jews, in some countries, are sj^e- 
cially prominent in unpopuhir professions, such as 
tax-gatherers and small money-lenders, agents, mani- 
pulators, and organisers of industry. They have little 
turn for labouring with their hands, but they have a 
special skill in directing and appropriating the labour 
of others. They have come to be looked upon as typi- 
cal capitalists, and therefore excite the hostility both 
of Socialists, who would make war on all capitalists, 
and of the very different class which views with jea- 
lousy the increasing power of money, as distinguished 
from land, in the government of the world ; while, on 
the other hand, they have themselves contributed 
largely to the socialistic and revolutionary elements in 
Europe. Among their many great gifts, they have 
never, as a race, possessed the charm of manner which 
softens, conciliates, and attracts, and the disintegra- 
tion of politics, which is such a marked feature of our 
time, brings every separate group into a clearer and 
stronger relief. It is as a distinct and alien element 
in the national life that they have been especially as- 
sailed. 

The Eussian persecution stands in some degree apart 
from the other forms of the anti-Semite movement, 
both on account of its unparalleled magnitude and fe- 
rocity, and also because it is the direct act of a Govern- 
ment deliberately, systematically, remorselessly seeking 
to reduce to utter misery about four and a half millions 
of its own subjects. The laws of General Ignatieff in 
May 1882, and the later and still more atrocious mea- 
sures that were taken at the instigation of M. Pobedo- 
nostseff, form a code of persecution which well deserves 
to rank with those that followed the religious wars of 



560 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

the sixteenth century.^ The Russian legislator does 
not, it is true, altogether proscribe the Jewish worship, 
though no synagogue is permitted in any place where 
there are less than eighty^ and no public prayer in any 
place where there are less than thirty, Jewish houses. 
J^^or does he absolutely and by a formal measure expel 
the Jews from Russian soil. Such a step has, indeed, 
been adopted on a large scale in 1891 and 1892, in the 
case of the poorer Jews of foreign nationality. It is 
estimated that these number about 150,000, and many 
of them, though of foreign parentage, had been born 
in Russia, had lived there all their lives, spoke no 
language except Russian, depended absolutely on Rus- 
sian industries for their livelihood, and desired nothing 
more than the naturalisation which was refused them. 
The small number who consented to abjure their faith 
were suffered to remain. Multitudes of the others 
were expelled from their houses, and driven like cattle 
by bands of Cossacks across the frontier, where thou- 
sands have perished by misery and cold.^ 

For the native Jews a different treatment was pro- 
vided. The legislator contented himself with driving 
the great body of these Jews, including several hun- 
dreds of thousands of persons, out of an immense pro- 
portion of the territory and out of the great cities, in 
which they had long lived unmolested ; confining 
them, in the territory in which they were allowed to 
dwell, to the overcrowded towns ; banishing them by 
countless restrictions, disabilities and disqualifications 



' An excellent summary of which incite Immigration to the 

these laws will be found in the United States (1892), pp. 149- 

report of Messrs. Weber and 65. 

Kempster to tlie House of Re- ^ See Errera, Les Juifs Rus- 

presentatives of the U.S.A. : ses (1893), pp. 40-43. Com- 

Report of Commissioners of pare the remarks of Weber and 

Immigration upon the Causes Kempster, p. 165. 



CH. VI. THE RUSSIAN PERSECUTION 561 

from all honourable and lucrative posts, and from a 
multitude of the trades and occupations in which they 
were accustomed to earn their livelihood, and thus 
deliberately reducing them to such a depth of misery 
that in some provinces large numbers perished by 
literal starvation.' 

The Jews are at the same time subject to a number 
of taxes which do not fall upon the Christians. Their 
offences are punished by special laws and harsher 
penalties. Their military service is more severe than 
that of Christians, and they are excluded from all 
the higher ranks of promotion. They are pronounced 
aliens by the law, their condition is regulated by spe- 
cial ordinances, and they are left unprotected to the 
mercies of the police. 

Bribes as well as penalties are employed for their 
conversion. Every adult convert is rewarded with a 
gift of from fifteen to twenty roubles from the State, 
and every child convert with half that sum. If one 
partner in a Jewish marriage adopts the orthodox 
faith, that partner is at once freed from the marriage 
tie, and permitted to marry a Christian. All the 
children under seven of the sex of the convert are 
compulsorily baptized. If the couple elect to live to- 
gether the convert must sign a declaration that he or 
she will endeavour to convert the other ; and if such 
conversion is not effected, both are prohibited from 
residing outside the Jewish pale. Though no one, ac- 
cording to Russian law, can perform a legal act under 
the age of twenty-one, Jewish children at the age of 
fourteen may be received into the Orthodox Church 
without the permission of their parents or guardians. 

There are, it is true, a variety of exemptions, some 



' Errera, Les Juifs Riisses^ pp. 103-9. 
VOL. I. 36 



562 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

of tliem resting upon regular decrees, but a lar^e part 
purely arbitrary and precarious. AYealthy Jews are 
able, after a certain number of years, to become mem- 
bers of what is called the First Guild, and are per- 
mitted by the payment of a large sum to purchase the 
right of living in any part of Russia ; and some classes 
are exempted from portions of the code on account of 
their university degrees, or of the practice of certain 
learned professions. Their number, however, has been 
carefully limited by a crowd of recent enactments re- 
stricting to very small proportions the Jews who are 
admitted to the universities and the professional train- 
ing schools, and in many other ways impeding their 
education. 

A more important exception is that of skilled arti- 
sans, who, under the system of passports, annually re- 
newed, are permitted to reside temporarily outside the 
pale. Their position, however, is utterly precarious. 
The passports may be at any time withdrawn. The 
permitted trades have never been authoritatively de- 
fined, and the limits of exemption have been frequently 
and arbitrarily contracted.^ By a recent enactment the 
artisans are only allowed in a small proportion of towns, 
where their industry can be under constant supervision.^ 
If through age or infirmity they are unable to work, 
they are at once banished to the pale, and any intermis- 
sion of work makes them liable to the same expulsion. 
It has been a common practice, write the American 
Commissioners, ' to visit the workshops in which these 
artisans were employed when they were out delivering 
work, or perhaps on a holiday, and because they were 
not found actually engaged in such artisan's work at 



1 Frederic, The New Exodus^ a Errera, p. 69. 

pp. 166-68. 



CH. VI. THE JEWISH ARTISANS 563 

the time of the visit, they were reported as being frandu- 
lently enrolled in the Artisans" Guild, and thereupon 
expelled to the pale/^ In many cases they have been 
expelled simply because they were not found working 
on their own Sabbath.^ 

The Jewish artisan outside the pale may bring with 
him his wife and children, but he must receive no other 
relatives, not even his father or mother, in his hut. He 
must sell nothing outside the pale, except what he has 
himself made, and under this rule tailors have been 
expelled because the buttons on the coats, and watch- 
makers because the keys of the watches they sold, were 
not of their own manufacture.^ Their wives also are 
under the severest restrictions. In 1891, ten wives of 
Jewish artisans were expelled from Kieff because they 
had been found guilty of selling bread and milk.^ 
Among the exempted trades is that of midwife, and 
Jewish midwives are permitted in all parts of the Em- 
pire, but they are specially forbidden to keep their 
children with them when outside the pale.^ A cha- 
racteristic provision permits the Jewish prostitute to 
ply her trade in any part of the Empire. Leroy-Beau- 
lieu mentions a well-authenticated case of a poor Jew- 
ish girl who, in order to purchase permission to learn 
shorthand at Moscow, actually took out the yellow pass- 
port of a prostitute, but was shortly afterwards expelled 
by the police, as it was found that she was not practis- 
ing the permitted trade. ^ 



1 Weber and Kempster, p. 39. mentions ' two perfectly authen- 

^ Frederic, The New Exodus^ ticated cases of young Jewish 

p. 248. girls of respectable families and 

3 Weber and Kempster, p. 39. unblemished characters who 

^ Errera, p. 73. adopted the desperate device of 

* Ibid. pp. 72-73. registering themselves as pros- 

* Errera, p. 31. Mr. Frederic titutes in order to be allowed to 



564 DEMOCRACY AISTD LIBERTY ch. vi. 

In spite of the shackles that are imposed on the Rus- 
sian press, and the misrepresentations of official writers, 
the facts of this persecution have been largely^ though 
no doubt very imperfectly, disclosed. The Government 
of the United States rendered a great service to history 
by sending two singularly competent and judicial com- 
missioners to study on the spot the nature and the cause 
of a persecution which drives tens of thousands of Jew- 
ish emigrants to America. Their admirably full and 
temperate report ; the excellent work in which Profes- 
sor Errera has collected and sifted the best evidence 
relating to the persecution ; the writings of M. Leroy- 
Beaulieu, who is a capital authority both on Russian 
and on Jewish questions, and a few well-informed ar- 
ticles which appeared in the foreign press, have brought 
together a vast mass of well-authenticated evidence, and 
Mr. Harold Frederic has related the story in a book 
which is founded on close personal investigation, and 
which is one of the most powerful and most terrible of 
our time. 

To these writers I must refer the reader for the de- 
tails of a persecution which far exceeds in atrocity any 
other that has taken place in Europe in the nineteenth 
century. It cannot be measured by the mere letter of 
the law, though few persons who have examined the 
new code will doubt that it was deliberately and 
methodically constructed with the object of driving 
the great bulk of the Jewish population to the alter- 
native of conversion, starvation, or exile. Still more 
horrible have been the sanguinary outbursts of popular 
fury, often connived at, if not instigated, by authority. 



remain with their aged parents 216). See, too, p. 247, and 
in the city where tliey were Weber and Kempster, p. 42. 
born' {The New Exodus^ p. 



CH. VI. VIOLENCE OF THE PERSECUTION 565 

the brutal acts of arbitrary yiolence by which the per- 
secution at every stage has been continually accom- 
panied. 

If the reader suspects this language of exaggeration, 
he should study the accounts in the writers I have 
cited of the police raid on the Jewish quarter of Mos- 
cow, which began the expulsion of the Jews from that 
city in 1891 and 1892, when more than 700 men, 
women, and children, who had committed no shadow 
of offence, were dragged from their homes in the dead 
hour of the night, and, in the extreme cold of a Eus- 
sian winter, first taken to the prison, and then marched 
in chains out of the city and summarily exiled to the 
pale.i He should read the account of the Jewish 
settlement of Marina Kostscha, which was surrounded 
during the night by a band of Cossacks with torches 
and drawn swords, who dragged at least 300 unsuspect- 
ing Jewish families from their beds, and, scarcely giving 
them time to dress, drove them from their homes, 
through the woods and over the snow-covered ground, 
beyond the limits of the province. Utter ruin natu- 
rally accompanied the persecution. The Jews were 
cut off from their only means of livelihood. There 
was a wholesale repudiation of debts ; and this was, no 
doubt, a leading motive in the tragedy. Those who 
possessed realised property were prevented from re- 
moving it, and forced to sell it at the shortest notice 
to a hostile population, usually for a minute fraction 
of its real value. ^ Multitudes of the fugitives perished 



1 The official paper at St. 289-92 ; Wehev and Kempster, 

Petersburg denied the em- pp. 47-51. 

ployment of chains, but it is "^ Some striking instances of 

established by overwhelming this at Moscow are given in The 

evidence. See Frederic, pp. Mw Uxod us ^ ^t^. 222-28. 



566 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

on the road by cold, or starvation, or fatigue. Some, 
in the agony of their distress, found a refuge in suicide. 
Sick Jews in the extreme of suffering were repelled 
from the Christian hospitals/ and tens of thousands, 
in the utmost destitution to which human beings can 
sink, have been driven from their country to seek a 
refuge among strangers. According to the careful 
estimate of Mr. Frederic, in the single year which 
ended in October, 1892, at least a quarter of a million 
of Russian Jews have in this way been forced into 
exile. ^ 

Xowhere, indeed, in modern Europe have such pic- 
tures of human suffering and human cruelty been wit- 
nessed as in that gloomy Northern Empire, where the 
silence of an iron despotism is seldom broken except 
by the wailings of the famine-stricken, the plague- 
stricken, and the persecuted. 

La, sotto giorni brevi e nebulosi, 

ISJ'asce una gente a cui 11 morir non duole. 

Nearly half of the Jewish race is said to have dwelt 
there, and their persecution is no modern thing, though 
in the multitude of its victims the persecution under 
Alexander III. has transcended all that preceded it. 
The causes which produced the anti-Semite movement 
in other lands existed in Russia in peculiar intensity, 
as there was no other country where the Jews were so 
numerous, and scarcely any where the Christians were 
at once so ignorant and so poor. The charge of 
Nihilism was made much use of, though in truth but 
very few Jews have been proved guilty of conspiracy.^ 



MVeber and Kemi)ster, p. 41. ^Frederic (pp. 118 19) and 

^ The Nev) Exodus^ pp. 283- Errera (pp. 144-45), haA-e shoAvn 

84. the very small number of Jews 



CH. VI. CAUSES OF THE PERSECUTION 567 

An evil chance had placed upon the throne an absolute 
ruler who combined with much private virtue and very 
limited faculties all the genuine fanaticism of the great 
persecutors of the past^ and who found a new Tor- 
quemada at his side. He reigned over an Administra- 
tion which is among the most despotic^ and probably^ 
without exception^ the most corrupt and the most 
cruel in Europe ; over a people with many amiable and 
noble qualities^ but ignorant and credulous, sunk in 
poverty far exceeding that of AVestern Europe, de- 
tached by a great economical revolution from their 
old grooves and guiding influences, and peculiarly sub- 
ject to fierce gusts of fanatical passion. Among the 
causes of the great Eussian persecutions of Polish 
Catholics, of Lutherans, of Eussian dissenters, and, 
above all, of Jews, much has been ascribed by the best 
observers to the mere greed of corrupt officials seeking 
for blackmail and for confiscations. Much has been 
due to social collisions ; to the hatred aroused by the 
competition of a more industrious, more intelligent, 
and more sober race ; to the hatred which debtors bear 
to their creditors ; to the natural tendency of op- 
pressed, ignorant, and poverty-stricken men to throw 
the blame of their very real sufferings upon some 
isolated and alien race. Eeligious fanaticism also, 
which has a deep hold over the Eussian nature, and 
which has shown itself in many strange explosions, has 
borne a considerable part. But probably not less 
powerful than any of these motives has been the desire 
to make Eussia purely Eussian, expelling every foreign 
element from the Slavonic soil. It is a feeling which 
has long smouldered in great strata of Eussian society. 



among the convicted Nihilists. various charges brought against 
Errera examines very fully the the Russian Jews. 



568 DEMOCRACY AND LIBERTY ch. vi. 

and to which the Panslavist moYement of our own day 
has given a vastly augmented power and scope. Some 
of the most disgraceful apologies for the savage perse- 
cutions in Russia have come from writers who profess 
to be champions of nationalities, ardent supporters of 
liberty and progress. 



END OF FIRST VOLUME. 



